innkeeper who when Antonín was 13 years of age moved to Zlonice, a little town three miles from Nelahozeves. At Zlonice Antonín found a good music teacher in the old schoolmaster Antonín Liehmann who taught him elementary theory, violin, viola, piano and organ playing. He called his father’s attention to the great talent of Antonín, but the financial conditions of the inkeeper were so bad that he could not make any other decision than to make the son his successor. So Antonín became a butcher’s apprentice for two years and on November 2, 1856 was declared a regular butcher journeyman. Next year Liehmann renewed his insistence, uncle Zdeněk promised financial support, and the father allowed Antonín to go to Prague.
In the fall of 1857 the 16-year old boy entered the Organ School in Prague. The New York critic H. E. Krehbiel wrote 35 years later: “The fate which gave the world an eminent composer robbed Bohemia of a butcher.” Let us remember that the President-Liberator of the Czechoslovak Republic Thomas Garrigue Masaryk was at the age of fourteen a blacksmith’s apprentice.
In Prague Dvořák earned his livelihood by playing the viola in Komzák’s private band which in 1862 became the nucleus of the Interim Theater orchestra, the conductor of which Smetana became four years later. Thus Dvořák was the first viola player in the orchestra at the first performance of Smetana’s “Bartered Bride” on May 30, 1866.
In 1862 Dvořák began to compose, but he had to wait till 1873 for Fortune’s smile. On March 9, 1873, his first great success was won by a patriotic cantata for mixed chorus and orchestra. The words were supplied by Hálek’s poem “The Heirs of the White Mountain” (site of the battle in which the Czechs lost their independence on November 8, 1620). The same year Dvořák married his pupil Miss Anna Čermák and became organist of St. Adalbert’s church, with a yearly salary of 126 florins ($50.00). In February, 1875, a brighter star appeared in the sky for the striving composer. He received 400 florins ($160.00 at that time) from the governmental fund for the encouragement of talented composers of limited financial means.
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