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Dear friends of music,
More than 60 famous musicians of Czech music and musical
organisations are celebrating anniversaries in 2004. At the same
time, the composers Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček have been
included on the UNESCO list of international anniversaries. The
100th anniversary of the death of perhaps the most famous composer
in Czech history, Antonín Dvořák (8.9.1841 Nelahozeves – 1. 5. 1904
Prague) also gave rise to many interesting projects. To mark this
special jubilee and in collaboration with the National Museum –
Czech Museum of Music, we are publishing a facsimile of the
maestro’s score for the IX. Symphony in E minor, “From the New
World”, op. 95, together with a further publication of accompanying
texts. The publication will be published as zero in the Museum
Edition series, which is also dedicated to bringing long over-looked
or unpublished works of Czech composers to light and onto concert
stages.
Volume one – the score – manuscript facsimile. 126 colour
pictures were made using a special no-contact scanner designed for
the digitalisation of historical written documents (viz. technical
details). The manuscript originally was in loose sheets and later
bound at the turn of the 20th century using an ordinary book binding
technique, during this process the pages were rather insensitively
cropped. It was therefore not possible to publish the facsimile
without edges in the same precise format and thus risk that the
cropping process would encroach into the musical score. The white
outer edges highlight the colour difference of the faded pages of
the original manuscript. Paper was chosen with the quality of the
original in mind, despite the fact that the structure of the fibre
is actually pressed. Thanks to the quality of today’s reproduction
technology, all of the author’s notes and retouches are clearly
visible, which is one of the most alluring aspects for researchers,
conductors, interpreters and other music aficionados.
Volume two – expert commentary – we decided to use part of
the expert and highly valuable commentary by leading Czech
musicologist, Jarmil Burghauser, from the first facsimile
publication of this work (1972). Jarmil Burghauser remains a
recognised expert in the analysis of Dvořák’s manuscripts to this
day. The text has been no less eruditely and sensitively reworked,
edited and supplemented by PhDr. Milan Kuna, DrSc, the author of
many musicology publications, including the ten volume work
assembled by a team of authors he directed, “Antonín Dvořák:
Correspondence and Documents”, “Music on the Edge of Life”, and
“Celebrated Names in Czech Music” to name but a few. A detailed
history of the origin of the symphony, together with excerpts from
letters related to the work and a detailed analysis of the
manuscript, including the latest information to come to light, are,
together with the score, an invitation to all those who wish to
deepen their knowledge. The final word belongs to PhDr. Markéta
Hallová, who notes the number of interpreters and celebrated names
who have performed Dvořák’s IX. Symphony. She also emphasises the
importance of the work for both today and tomorrow; after all, the
“New World” was played by the astronauts prior to their first steps
on the moon for good reason and it was also chosen as part of
Mankind’s greeting to other life forms in the cosmic search for
other civilisations.
The publication of this facsimile of Antonín Dvořák’s IX. Symphony
pays homage to a genius who managed to combine innumerable musical
ideas and this in musical form that enables his compositions to
surprise us to this day. MgA. Tomáš
Kirschner
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