Abstract
No artist lives or creates in a social vacuum. Whether actively or passively, as zóon polítikon, he or she takes part in the political events of the community.
The Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) was known more for his extraordinary music than for his political opinions. Sources diverge in the question of whether he was even interested in period events at all.
In his thirties, Antonín Dvořák considered himself a so-called Mladočech [Young Czech], a sympathizer of the Národní strana svobodomyslá [National Freedom Party]. However, he also had close ties with their ideological opponent - František Ladislav Rieger, a representative of the conservative Národní strana [National Party], dubbed Staročeši [Old Czechs].
Even during the composer's life, after his death, and under the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, this fact was interpreted (or perhaps intentionally misinterpreted) as a manifestation of Dvořák's lack of political awareness, naivety, or submissiveness. The prominent supposed example of this personal weakness and musical reactionism was seen in his opera Dimitrij, based on a libretto written by Marie Červinková, the daughter of the Staročech František Rieger.
The example of Dimitrij was seized upon by the historian, musicologist, and later politician Zdeněk Nejedlý to initiate his ardent offensive on behalf of Bedřich Smetana and his role in the development of Czech music. Nejedlý accused Dvořák of abandoning the progressive Wagnerian line of development in favour of not just conservative, but even reactionary grand opera.
Dimitrij was placed in juxtaposition to Bedřich Smetana's oeuvre - "With Dimitrij, Dvořák clearly and consciously opposed Smetana's efforts." The Staročeši, he claimed, took advantage of a naive Dvořák, convinced him to compose old-fashioned, reactionary opera in contradiction to Bedřich Smetana's attempt to create a modern yet simultaneously national Czech music. After the composer's death in 1904, the alleged antagonism between Smetana and Dvořák was imprinted in the reception of both Dimitrij and Dvořák's oeuvre in general.
The disputes escalated during the so-called "Battle for Dvořák", which reached its peak before the First World War but left a bitter aftertaste that lasted until the Second World War. The group of music critics and composers headed by Nejedlý accused Dvořák - as opposed to Smetana - of eclecticism, unoriginal primitivism, and triviality.
As Nejedlý claimed, Dvořák was "a boulder that the young Czech musician must roll out of the way to proceed further." On 15 March 1939, German Nazi troops entered the country. A day later, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was claimed by Adolf Hitler.
During the war, the name of Antonín Dvořák was used both by Czech patriots and Nazi propagandists. In the first case, Czech patriots emphasized the high value of Dvořák's music for the Czech nation.
Nazi propagandists explained Dvořák and his work in the context of German culture, on which, they said, the composer depended. Both ways of approaching Dvořák - and art and culture in general - changed and evolved over time Soon after the end of the Second World War, in February 1948, the Komunistická strana Československa [Communist Party of Czechoslovakia] came to power in the country.
The narrative was reminiscent of the previous attempt - with one very obvious common feature - it was once again Zdeněk Nejedlý who was the opinion maker and who had, because of his political background, the strongest voice. The propagandists focused more on his work, where they sought - on the foundations already laid by Zdeněk Nejedlý - features typical of socialist art: programmability, ideology, realism, folksiness.
Through Dvořák's life and work, the ruling ideology paid off its grudges against the bourgeois society of the so-called First Republic (1918-1938). Zdeněk Nejedlý was by his very nature an ideologist who subordinated his aesthetical judgment to the dictates of ideology.
Nejedlý laid the foundations of a perspective that has been promulgated among the general public and the academic community to this day. However, these views are passé.
It is important to be aware of their narrow historical determination and to avoid repeating old, misleading clichés. In musical practice, these disputations had no real impact.
Dvořák's music enjoyed and continues to enjoy immense popularity.