Oh, if only these walls could speak - Czechoslovak Society of Arts ...

Selected Papers from the 2003 SVU North American Conference, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 26-28 June 2003
Dvorak, traveling with several family members and Joseph Kovarik, arrived in New York
on September 28, 1892: St. Wenceslaus Day. During the next several months Dvorak, a “country
gentleman”, became homesick. He was planning to spend his four-month-long vacation at his
country home in Vysoka, Bohemia, but, fascinated by Kovarik’s vivid descriptions of Spillville,
Iowa and its people, the composer changed his mind and made arrangements to spend the
summer of 1893 in Spillville. This pleased Kovarik since he had not seen his family in five
years.
In his book THEY CAME TO THIS PLACE, Cyril Klimesh writes that Dvorak arrived in
Spillville on June 5 , 1893 and
“On his first morning in Spillville, Dvorak was up at dawn, roaming and
exploring the paths around the village. A little later, when Kovarik’s mother…
caught sight of the Master at 5 o’clock in the morning, walking up and down in
front of the school, she got a great fright as she thought something unpleasant
must have happened whereon the Master replied: ‘Nothing happened – and yet a
great deal. Imagine, I was walking there in the woods along by the stream and
after eight months I heard again the singing of birds! And here the birds are
different from ours, they have much brighter colors and they sing differently too.
And now I am going to breakfast and after breakfast I shall come again.’”
The above suggests that Antonin Dvorak did not live in the home of J. J. Kovarik. Some old time
Spillville citizens however maintain that he did spend the first few nights with the Kovariks after
his arrival in Spillville.
What is certain, however, is that Antonin Dvorak spent many hours in the Kovarik home.
It is also certain that Dvorak composed two significant works while in Spillville: Opus 96:
“Quartet in F Major” (affectionately named the “Spillville Quartet” by Dvorak himself), begun
and completed in June of 1893, and Opus 97: “Quintet in E Flat Major”, a work that reflects
Indian melodies, completed on August 1 st 1893. It is also certain that the first presentations of
Opus 96 and Opus 97 were in the Kovarik home, the 1870 parochial school building. The
musicians for these first “concerts” included several members of the Kovarik family, and Dvorak
himself. The most probable location of the performance would be the school room since this
room would have served as a social center for the community and is where J. J. would have
conducted band practice, choir practice and periodic sing fests.
Concerning Opus 96 and Opus 97 Cyril Klimesh, in his book THEY CAME TO THIS
PLACE, states:
“As soon as these compositions were completed, Dvorak asked the Kovarik family
to join him in playing them. Joseph Kovarik wrote: ‘The whole family was
mobilized for it. Dvorak played the first violin, my father the second, my sister
the viola and I the cello. We went at it full steam. It wasn’t easy, but we finally
succeeded. And for the string quintet, my brother (John) came from Chicago.
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