Symphony no. 8 (1889)

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

Sandwiched between the storm and stress of his Seventh Symphony on one side and his enormously popular Ninth, or New World Symphony on the other, Dvorak's Symphony no. 8 in G Major has become something of a lost child, often labeled a "pastoral" and dismissed with an absent-minded pat on the head. The symphony has more to recommend itself, however, than can be accounted for by the drowsy-eyed contemplation of green fields and babbling brooks, exploring a wide variety of moods resistant to comfortable packaging by any single adjective.

Pastoral elements do crop up, to be sure, as when in the first movement an unmistakable birdcall disturbs the slumber of a dreamy cello section. But as soon as the birdcall figure migrates away from the flute it takes on distinctly un-avian colors, by turns heroic, dramatic, or agitated. After the dreamy cello melody comes fully awake as a trumpet call-to-arms, the clarinets initiate a detour into some strange, rather ghostly regions. The movement's rambunctious close offers assurance that none of this ought to be taken quite seriously.

The second movement is a marvel of subtly shaded contrasts, opening with a restful figure that shifts by degrees into a stern warning. Flute and oboe answer with an aria-like melody accompanied by a sweetly simple-minded patter from the violins. This then evolves into a stately march, then something mysterious and distant, then an anguished cry, and so on, all without ever jeopardizing the movement's identity as a single episode that draws coherence from its very diversity. Although the third movement works its own contrasts with less supple, more obvious joins, the effect is no less striking. The form is the familiar minuet-and-trio, the minuet a bittersweet dance in minor gliding over a restless woodwind accompaniment, the trio a warmly contented response in major and one of the loveliest moments in the entire symphony. A sprightly coda appended to the repeat of the minuet serves the double function of dispelling the melancholy atmosphere and preparing the shift from the third movement's flowing triple meter to the duple meter of the fourth.

The attentive listener may catch echoes of the first movement's birdcall in the brisk fanfare that opens the finale. The regal processional march built from the fanfare by the lower strings and bassoons serves as the theme for a set of variations, a theme that is just a hair comic in its pomposity, as the full orchestra demonstrates by cranking up the tempo and throwing in a few raucous horn trills for good measure. Other diversions include a breathless flute solo and a comic Arabian march that explodes back into the trumpet fanfare. The processional returns, now leant some dignity by a meditation on its theme begun by the clarinet. A last return to the fast tempo variation, accented by spiking jabs of the fanfare, leads to the symphony's exuberant, take-no-prisoners close.

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