Symphony No. 8

Perhaps in reaction to Antonín Dvořák’s nickname for his Ninth Symphony, “From the New World,” his Eighth Symphony has occasionally been called the “London” Symphony, taking its place alongside symphonies by Haydn and Vaughan Williams named for the great city. But Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony has little reason to be associated with London other than the fact that it was published there by Novello, as Dvořák had temporarily fallen out with his longtime Berlin publisher, Simrock.

In truth, the Seventh has a greater claim to an association with London than the Eighth, since, like Beethoven’s Ninth, it was commissioned by London’s Philharmonic Society. Unlike Beethoven’s Ninth, Dvořák’s Seventh was first performed in London at a time when the composer was making frequent visits to England, appearing in cities across the country and making many friends among British musicians.

The Eighth, in contrast, was not commissioned by anyone and was written during summer 1889 at Dvořák’s country retreat in the Bohemian hills, where he always felt happy and productive.

Dvořák biographer John Clapham has called this the happiest of the composer’s symphonies and notes that, by this point in his career and life, Dvořák was no longer striving to impress an audience or emulate another composer; he was just allowing his playful invention to sprinkle ideas over four movements, to create a symphony that spoke to himself.

Dvořák finished the score on Novem­ber 8, 1889, and conducted the first performance in Prague the following February. He conducted it again in London in the same month, then in Frankfurt in November, and again in Cambridge when he received an honorary degree in June 1891.

Pretty soon, the symphony had been played to great success across Europe, demonstrating how highly Dvořák was regarded in art music circles at the time. Brahms, never easy to please, admired the work when he heard it in Vienna in January 1891. He called it “musically captivating and beautiful,” despite his ongoing misgivings about Dvořák’s idiosyncratic approach to symphonic form.

In that vein, Brahms may have been disconcerted by the opening of the first movement. Though marked Allegro con brio, it actually proceeds at a leisurely pace with a minor-key tune presented by two clarinets, one bassoon, two horns, and all the cellos — an extraordinarily inventive bit of scoring. Even when a solo flute offers a quite different, major-key theme, it scarcely feels like a symphonic allegro movement. Rapid activity soon infiltrates the texture, however, and the music builds to a robust, full declaration of the flute’s theme, the point at which the body of the first movement is definitively launched.

More important themes make their appearance, establishing a strong body of material for symphonic development. The movement’s development section begins in earnest with a trick Dvořák may have taken from Brahms. The music appears to be going back to the beginning with a literal repeat of the minor-key music and the flute’s major-key solo. This is not, however, a repetition of the exposition, as Mozart or Beethoven might have indicated. Instead, an exploration of new territory begins. The movement eventually concludes in unmistakably high spirits.

Next comes the symphony’s slow movement, also notable for moving from minor to major, with the latter episode marked again by a solo flute, played over an enchanting series of descending octave scales. This is the kind of music that lingers in memory long after a performance. Toward the end of the movement, tensions build before falling back to sweet, quiet tones as if nothing had happened.

The third movement is an elegant waltz, and its trio section seems to have been created especially to define the word “lilt.”

The fourth-movement finale, on the other hand, defies definition, beyond appearing to be a set of crazy variations on a lovely theme played by the cellos. The opening trumpet fanfare — perhaps in imitation of a bugle call to arms — is sufficient warning that no orthodox finale should be expected. Only in the famous Slavonic Dances do we get such a clear sense that Dvořák is composing entirely for his own enjoyment. This is fun-filled and jovial music of a special character, to which the trombones at the end contribute a hearty “Amen.”

— Hugh Macdonald

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.