Brahms is generally considered Beethoven’s chief successor as a symphonist, but a good case can be made for Antonin Dvořák. Most of Beethoven’s followers seemed to regard his middle period as a boundary beyond which they would not go. Dvořák’s Symphony no. 8 in G major, like most of Beethoven’s, charts new structural ground.

Dvořák’s music had an odd relationship with the Brahms wing of German music. Critics such as Edouard Hanslick held it in high esteem. But they believed that German composers represented the pinnacle of musical genius. Being Czech and not German, Dvořák only counted as a second-class citizen of their musical world.

The Habsburg rulers of the Austrian empire actively sought to repress the Czech language and culture, fearing it as subversive. Dvořák was more than a Czech nationalist, but an ardent nationalist nonetheless.

Brahms’ publisher Simrock issued the first three of Dvořák’s published symphonies, but reluctantly. He would have preferred a constant string of more popular and more saleable music. While he paid 3,000 marks for Dvořák’s D minor symphony (published as no. 2, known today as no. 7), he offered only 1,000 marks for the G major one (no. 4 in publication order, no. 8 in order of composition.) What’s more, he wanted to print the movement titles, and even Dvořák’s name, in German.

(Dvořák composed nine symphonies and published five of them in his lifetime. That fact has led to some oddities in numbering. Any score, parts, or description of any Dvořák symphony published before the 1970s will have the old numbering.)

Dvořák refused Simrock’s offer and demands and had the new symphony published by Novello in London. For this reason, some have referred to the G major symphony as Dvořák’s “English” symphony.

It might make more sense to refer to it as his “Russian” symphony for its debt to Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. But in character, perhaps, it more closely resembles Beethoven’s Sixth (Pastoral) Symphony. It also shares structural similarities with Beethoven’s Third (Eroica) Symphony.

The genesis of a new symphony

Tchaikovsky conducted his Fifth Symphony in Prague during his 1888 visit, shortly after its world premiere. On that visit, he invited Dvořák to visit Russia. In later correspondence, Dvořák considered which of his works to conduct there. He knew he had to include one of his symphonies, of which he had published three, but couldn’t decide which one.

Dvořák started his Eighth Symphony two days later. He completed most of the work in 1889 at his summer residence in Vysoká. Many observers see the sunny disposition of this symphony as a reflection of his love for the natural beauty of the Bohemian countryside. He finished it in time to have it played in Russia but decided against it.

Dvořák explained that he intended his G major symphony to be “different from the other symphonies, with individual thoughts worked out in a new way.” It certainly has the least structural resemblance to Beethoven of all his symphonies.

In formal terms, the symphony as received from Haydn and Beethoven has a clear tonal structure with well-defined first and second theme groups. Brahms’ symphonies and Dvořák’s earlier ones likewise conform to this structure. But not this symphony.

The opening movement of the G major symphony actually begins in G minor and arrives at G major only by going through E-flat major and A-flat major. The opening in minor might have worked as a slow introduction, except it’s in the same tempo as the rest of the movement. It’s also more substantial than the first G major theme.

The movement therefore has no standard first and second theme group. The cantabile style of all the thematic material seems more typical of vocal music than instrumental music.

Dvořák and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony

One of Dvořák’s students later recalled that he initially found Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony startling but soon came to regard it as a profound work. He appears to have studied it carefully before starting his new symphony.

On the surface, nothing in Dvořák’s symphony sounds much like Tchaikovsky’s. For one thing, it’s in G major, the relative major of Tchaikovsky’s E minor. It has no emotional anguish. But structural similarities are too numerous to be coincidental.

The choice of G major may be as radical as the choice of Tchaikovsky as a model. No important composer since Haydn had issued a symphony in G major. Instead, G major had seemed more appropriate for songs and folk music. And Dvořák’s thematic material certainly sounds more like Bohemian folk music than it does Tchaikovsky.

Although Dvořák’s opening theme has little melodic relationship with Tchaikovsky’s, it shares some notable structural similarities. Both themes are placed in the tenor register with a soft dynamic. Solo clarinet has a conspicuous part in both. Accompanimental figures are likewise similar.

In fact, all of Tchaikovsky’s thematic material in his first movement has echoes in Dvořák’s in key relationships, dynamics, and instrumentation, but not melody. Later movements likewise show how Dvořák did many of the same things as Tchaikovsky, but differently. The importance of march themes, for example, is another structural echo of Tchaikovsky.

The structure of Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony

There are some important differences, however. Tchaikovsky begins his symphony with a “fate” motive that doesn’t reappear in the movement. Dvořák’s introductory theme appears again immediately after the exposition and just before the recapitulation.

The “fate” theme appears in the later movements of Tchaikovsky’s symphony, giving it a cyclical structure. Dvořák does not repeat any thematic material from one movement to another.

The second movement amounts to a very slow rondo with contrasting moods. The only other slow symphonic rondo I can think of is the funeral march in Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. Like the opening movement, this one begins in the “wrong” key. It starts in E-flat major before settling into C minor.

The third movement comes closer to the standard symphony more than any of the others. Classical composers used a dance form, the minuet, for their third movements. Beethoven usually played the same form at breakneck speed called it a scherzo. His successors experimented with different kinds of third movements. Here, Dvořák returns to a dance form in triple meter, but a waltz instead of a minuet.

The finale likewise uses a standard structure, a theme and variations, but that form rarely appears as a fourth movement. Dvořák’s closest precedent seems to be the finale of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. Like Beethoven, Dvořák doesn’t conform to the usual variation structure. The movement opens with a trumpet fanfare. When conductor Rafael Kubelik rehearsed it, he pointed out, “Gentlemen, in Bohemia the trumpets never call to battle—they always call to the dance.”

The reception of Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony

From the start, audiences loved the new symphony. Indeed, some critics immediately held it in high regard, but not all of them. Comparison with Tchaikovsky may help to explain some critical reservations.

Tchaikovsky’s movement lasts 16 minutes, Dvořák’s only 10. Tchaikovsky introduces numerous themes with little organic relationship to each other, but he repeats each of them before going on to the next. This repetition gives audiences a chance to digest each theme before the next begins.

Dvořák’s themes are more interrelated but not repeated. He moves quickly from one to the next. That choice greatly annoyed critics, who complained that Dvořák stuffed too many themes into the movement.

Brahms, for example, wrote

Too much that’s fragmentary, incidental, loiters about in the piece. Everything fine, musically captivating and beautiful—but no main points! Especially in the first movement, the result is not proper. But a charming musician! When one says of Dvorak that he fails to achieve anything great and comprehensive, having too many individual ideas, this is correct. Not so with Bruckner, all the same he offers so little!

Well into the twentieth century, some critics have found the Eighth Symphony such a mishmash of too many themes that they hardly consider it a symphony at all. Hermann Kretzchmar, for example, noted

It is far too underdeveloped, and its fundamental conception is too strongly grounded in loose invention. It inclines toward the character of Smetana’s tone-poems and of Dvorak’s own Slavonic Rhapsodies.

This attitude may indicate lingering critical opinion that symphonies ought to follow Beethoven’s structural practices. On the other hand, a British critic, writing in response to the London premiere of the G major symphony, noted, “Dvorak alone – though he, too, like Brahms, has sought to keep to the Beethoven school – has been able to bring a distinctly new element into the symphony.”

Audiences hardly care what critics think. Dvořák’s Symphony no. 8 remains one of his best-loved works.

Related posts:

Antonin Dvořák’s tone poems and the critics
From the New World: 9th symphony by Antonin Dvořák

Sources:

Antonin Dvořák Symphony no. 8 / Antonin Dvořák website
Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony / Elizabeth Schwartz, Oregon Symphony Orchestra program notes
Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony: A response to Tchaikovsky? / Hartmut Schick, in Rethinking Dvořák: views from five countries. Edited by David R. Beveridge (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996)