Dvorak was a sound musician. He had studied Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert but was devoted to his own folk-lore and the harmonies which appealed to his nation. He was particularly interested in national types of music and when in America the negro music appealed to him tremendously. While here, he taught H. C. Burleigh, the negro composer and singer, with whom he had an interesting and fruitful friendship. When he went back to Bohemia, he wrote the New World Symphony, built on negro folk ideas, and a string quartet in which he has used negro themes. Isn’t it curious that it often takes an outsider to show us the beauties at our own door step?
He wrote many songs, symphonic poems and five symphonies and many other forms of music. Although he was very strict in the use of form, his work was free, full of melody and imagination. It is distinguished by warm color, beautiful rhythms and flowing melody, daring modulations and withal a sense of naturalness. Some people consider him one of the greatest masters of orchestration of the 19th century. Probably you have heard Fritz Kreisler and many others play the famous Humoresque, and you may also know his incomparable Songs My Mother Taught Me.
Roumania
Georges Enesco (1881) a most gifted violinist, conductor and composer, born in Cordaremi, is the principal representative of Roumania. His first work is Poème Roumain, in which, as well as in many others, he shows his Roumanian birth. He wrote symphonies and other orchestral works, chamber music and songs.
The Land of the Polonaise
Poland first springs into prominence as an art center in music with Frédéric Chopin, but it has produced many other pianists and pianist-composers,—among them, Carl Tausig.
If you like brilliant salon and over-decorated pieces, you will enjoy the works of Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1924), who was born of Polish descent in Breslau. He was a fine pianist and had a long list of pupils including the brilliant American, Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler.
Poland has given us Ignace Jan Paderewski (1860), whose Minuet you probably know, and whose amazing piano skill is familiar to you. While he has written many piano pieces, a fairly successful gypsy opera, Manru, an interesting piano concerto and a symphony, it is as pianist that he will be remembered. He has been the idol of every nation in which he has played.
His pupil, Sigismund Stojowski (1870), has lived in America since 1906 and has written orchestral works, a piano concerto and many piano pieces.