Antonín Dvořák’s dramatic ballad The Spectre's Bride composed in 1883 promises a powerful musical impact. The revised vocal score is now available from Bärenreiter Praha.

The enthusiasm of English audiences for large-scale vocal works led to Dvořák being commissioned in November 1883 to write a cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra for the 1885 Birmingham Musical Festival.  He started work on Svatební košile (The Spectre's Bride) in early May and finished it on 27 November 1884. He himself conducted the first two performances on 28 and 29 March 1885 in Plzeň. In May that year there were further performances in Olomouc and Prague, before the English premiere took place as The Spectre’s Bride on 27 August 1885 in Birmingham, again under Dvořák’s direction. The new work was enthusiastically received. In the many reviews the assessment of The Spectre’s Bride was extremely positive. For his work, Dvořák chose the ballad text Svatební košile (which literally translates as The Bride’s Nightgown) by the Czech poet Karel Jaromír Erben (1811–1870).

The ghostly ballad is a turmoil of emotions encompassing longing, horror, hope, doubt and, at the end, relief. The tale told is one of a wild and furious nocturnal hunt, through sludgy swamps and over bare rocks, passing by gloomy, glimmering will o’ the wisps and dogs howling threateningly. The first cockcrow at the rays of the rising sun brings the episode to an end and, with it, the happy rescue of the bride.

The ballad is divided into numbers (mainly linked in the composition through attacca transitions) which are grouped according to the various scenarios in the story into three parts (Introduction up to no. 4, nos. 5–12 and nos. 13–18). Diverging from the literary model, which envisaged a single narrator to recite the whole text, Dvořák assigned most of the text passages in which the protagonists “speak” to the solo roles of the girl (soprano) and the dead bridegroom (tenor). In addition, the function of the narrator is taken jointly by a solo part (bass or baritone) and the chorus. The orchestra also has a very important role. It conveys the epic-dramatic expression of the musical progress, complementing the vocal parts, and is the bearer of the musical action. Only in two numbers does a lyrical style come to the fore, both times in the two arias of the girl (no. 2 and no. 17). These are conceived as prayer scenes and mark inner turning points which slow down the forward movement, at the same time eliciting decisive transformations.

The musical cohesion of the choral ballad is based on a main motif and reminiscence motifs largely derived from it, the principle of motif transformation as well as typical elements of Dvořák’s personal style. To this are added rhythmic accentuations, a catchy melodic style often developed through additive sequences, his preferred colouristic use of individual woodwind instruments and a vivid depiction of individual acoustic details. Just as the style of the forward movement illustrates the ballad-like prevailing mood, the arch-form structure of the work also contributes, amongst other things, to the recapitulation of the central motifs from the first part right at the end of the work. So, the restoration of the opening situation at the end clarifies further the constancy of position of those who “merely” recount and hear the story, that is the narrator and chorus on the one hand, and the audience on the other. A further means employed in this narrative style is the ballad tone, close to speech, which is prominent time and time again, given both to the orchestra and the chorus. In contrast with this, the musical portrayal of the two protagonists (the girl and the bridegroom) depicts their active involvement in the story, through which two time levels are created within the choral ballad.

Daniela Philippi
(aus [t]akte 2/2012)