G.B.Shaw, famous intellectual gadfly once  wrote the following. “Those who can – do. Those who can’t – criticise”. Like many throwaway off the cuff statements this is a generalisation open to question but one could change it to “ Those who can- create. Those who can’t- criticise.”

It has been the curse of some great composers to be faulted

not so much for what they are but for what they are not. In other words it’s the lion’s fault for not being a mouse. And so it is for Dvorak. He had the dubious distinction ,together with Felix Mendelssohn , of being  accused of not having enough spirituality and/or intellect.The self proclaimed intellectuals of the music world ,our music critics, have inherited the peculiar 19th century attitude which rates a composition by the extent of it’s expression of existential pain ,suffering  and  pessimism.Woe betide the composer who sets out to entertain the listener with pleasantries.

Dvorak’s “From the New World symphony” is a perennial favourite of concert audiences. It is a masterpiece full of melody, infectious rhythms ,charm, mild nostalgia , but is basically optimistic and heart warming.Audiences love to listen to music that makes them “feel good”. (This is regrettable but luckily we have critics who are working hard to counter this tendency) .Only ignoramuses without taste would question their opinion.The well known French conductor and avant- garde composer Pierre Boulez stated that the only composers he respects are the revolutionaries, the ones who ADVANCED the art of music, which of course puts Dvorak out of the picture.Why revolution is  commended and desirable is a question which is not addressed. It is somewhat like the tyranny of a politIcal movement. You are either with us or against us and if you are not then it shows how ignorant you are. However the great composer Maurice Ravel has this to say about the difference between evolution and revolution.( Ravel was both clever and wise.For him ,evolution didn’t  mean that Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was a greater artistic achievement than Mozart’s G minor symphony.)

SUPPOSE YOU ARE IN A ROOM STUDYING. AFTER A FEW HOURS YOU FEEL THAT THE ATMOSPHERE IS A LITTLE STUFFY AND YOU NEED A CHANGE OF AIR SO YOU OPEN THE WINDOW. THE FRESH AIR ENTERS THE ROOM AND IN  A WHILE YOU CLOSE THE WINDOW ,THAT IS ALL.   THAT IS EVOLUTION.

YOU ARE IN A ROOM, YOU FEEL THAT YOU NEED A CHANGE OF AIR, YOU TAKE A STONE,HEAVE IT AT THE WINDOW AND BREAK THE WiNDOW. OF COURSE THE FRESH AIR ENTERS BUT THEN YOU HAVE TO REPAIR THE WINDOW.     THAT’S REVOLUTION

I DON’T NEED TO BREAK A WINDOW. I KNOW HOW TO OPEN IT.

On another occasion Ravel castigated one of his students who had disparaged the operas of Puccini. Ravel opened a Puccini score , and pointed out to the student examples of Puccini’s skill as a composer. Puccini didn’t need to present his revolutionary credentials to merit  Ravel’s praise.

Dvorak’s music is like the man himself. He  called himself an honest Czech musician, without airs and graces.It was all  too easy for the sophisticates to look upon him as a sort of naive and amiable country bumpkin, admittedly talented, but who wrote a lot of pleasing music with too much facility, without strain or judgement.

The same could have been said about Mozart. But we have it on record that it didn’t come without effort for either of these supremely gifted composers. Mozart has written about inspiration, about how ,or rather when he gets an idea. He cannot explain how it happens but the idea itself is but a small part of the process.It is what a composer does with an idea which is important and where the effort lies.

It’s the old story of “ 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration”.The facile criticism of Dvorak as lacking “intellectuality”, whatever that means is   without foundation. His compositions are full of examples of great skill, ingenious ways of using his “inspiration”.But the trick is to not show how hard you have worked to achieve such apparent ease. Dvorak is not a show off, nor does he use music as a substitute for the psychoanalyst’s couch, as a way of offloading his   traumas and emotional problems.

The great poet Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Criticism, A LITTLE BIT OF LEARNING IS A DANGEROUS THING. Perhaps one could assert the opposite.

Some critics have shown that a lot of learning is equally dangerous. It depends on WHAT you have learnt and how well you have digested that learning. In the case of Dvorak it is the audiences who have shown that you don’t always need to be taught what is good to accord to a great composer the esteem and love which are his due.