Posted August 26, 2024
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, tambourine, harp, strings
Antonin Dvořák
(Born near Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic) in 1841; died in Prague in 1904)
Carnival Overture, Op 92
In the late 1880’s, Dvořák’s international composing career was just beginning to take off when he discovered the “new” music of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner (as opposed to Brahms’s more traditional style). Their music represented new directions in Classical music, and Dvořák was particularly interested in Liszt’s tone poems. Tone poems use an idea or an underlying story to direct their formal shape, and in 1891 Dvořák began to experiment. He wrote a trio of concert overtures based on the overarching theme of “Nature” – a divine force in Dvořák’s view that not only created and gave love and joy but could equally powerfully destroy. Each Overture represented one of Nature’s three elements and Dvořák named them, respectively: In Nature’s Realm (“Nature”), Carnival Overture (“Life”), and Othello (“Love”). Each Overture used, however briefly or extensively, a single musical theme to unify the triptych, which has come to be referred to as the “Nature” theme. Of the three Overtures, the swashbuckling Carnival Overture became the most beloved and popular.
Dvořák wrote that the Carnival portrayed:
“…the lonely, contemplative wanderer reaches the city at nightfall, where a carnival is in full swing. On every side is heard the clangor of instruments, mingled with shouts of joy and the unrestrained hilarity of people giving vent to their feelings in their songs and dance tunes.”
To capture this carnival atmosphere, Dvořák creates kaleidoscopes and whirlwinds of colors, beginning with a syncopated theme in the strings, punctuated with crashing cymbals, pounding timpani, and an extensive and virtuosic tambourine part. At around 4 minutes into the work, Dvořák introduces a slow and languorous section – meant to depict the “the lonely, contemplative wanderer” – which begins with the English horn and followed by the flute, and eventually giving way to a solo clarinet which briefly plays the “Nature” theme. The carnival antics soon pick back up, and as the Overture sprints to its final bars, Dvořák finds ingenious ways to continually ramp the energy up ever higher, as though the Carnival will never stop. And when final notes finally do ring out, it’s an exhilarating ending indeed.
© Max Derrickson