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An Abiding Legacy: The Spillville Centennial Celebrates Dvorak's Iowa Retreat
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10204 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1993 |
3,254 Words |
| Author
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John C. Tibbetts
John C. Tibbetts, an associate professor of theater and film
at the University of Kansas, contributes regularly to national
music publications and is editor of the recently published
Dvorak in America.
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One hundred years ago, the celebrated Czech composer Antonin Dvorak was teaching at the National Conservatory in New York City. His New World Symphony was soon to be completed, and he had made many new friends. But Dvorak was homesick. He missed the language, customs, countryside, and birdsongs of his native Bohemia. His secretary, J.J. Kovarik, recommended the little town of Spillville, Iowa, as a place where he could again experience the language and customs of his native land.
Dvorak and his family stayed in Spillville just over three months, from June 5 to September 17, 1893. While there, the composer felt spiritually and creatively renewed, and developed some of his greatest works, notably the F-major String Quartet, Opus 96, and the E-flat major String Quintet, Opus 97 (both originally subtitled "Spillville").
"The three months spent here in Spillville will remain a happy memory for the rest of our lives," he wrote. "We enjoyed being here and were very happy . . . [to be] among our own people, our Czech countrymen, and that gave us great joy." Neither he nor the villagers would ever forget the experience.
Iowa's Czech and Slovak heritage
Spillville, located in the extreme northeast corner of Iowa in Winneshiek County, played its own small part in the reception of Bohemians to the New World. In the late 1840s Bohemia abolished serfdom, and, for the first time in two hundred years, restrictions on travel and land ownership were lifted. The Austrian-controlled government was in disarray, however; poverty and unemployment among the peasants were
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