Antonín Dvořák’s Requiem: One of the composer’s most profound works

Close to the age of 50, Antonín Dvořák embarked upon a music testimony of his relationship with God and an attempt to answer the most fundamental issues of human existence.

Given the emotional depth of this work, it is somewhat surprising that Dvořák’s decision to write a mass for the dead was not motivated by the death of someone close to him, or by a premonition of his own demise. The impulse for the composition was much more prosaic -his London-based publisher suggested he might like to write a requiem.

Antonín Dvořák|Photo: Ian Willoughby, Radio Prague International

The suggestion came at an auspicious time. Dvořák had almost reached the age of fifty and was ready to harness all his acquired skills as a composer and experience as an individual in meeting this challenge.

In composing a work to the text of the Latin Requiem Mass, Dvořák followed in the footsteps of a number of predecessors (among them Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi) and also picked up the threads of his previous sacred works – Stabat Mater, Saint Ludmila, and his Mass in D major. He began working on the Requiem at the end of 1889 and completed the work in October of 1890.

The world premiere of the work was held on 9 October 1891 during the Birmingham music festival; with Dvořák conducting. The next performance also took place on English soil, in Manchester on 3 March. Two performances followed in Olomouc, on 12 and 13 March 1892, which Dvořák again conducted. The Requiem received its Prague premiere at the National Theatre on 25 April 1892.

Its reception exceeded expectations. Leading contemporary conductor Hans Richter, who did much to promote Dvořák’s work on the international scene, described the Requiem as a work in which “there are places that make you want to cry out in pain and joy.”