Antonín Dvořák

Antonín Leopold Dvořák (, (often pronounced in English as ) ; September 8, 1841 – May 1, 1904) was a Czech composer of romantic music, who employed the idioms and melodies of the folk music of his native Bohemia and Moravia in symphonic, oratorial, chamber and opera works. Dvořák was born on September 8, 1841 in Nelahozeves, near Prague (then Austrian Empire, today the Czech Republic), where he spent most of his life. His father was a butcher, innkeeper, and professional player of the zither. Dvořák's parents recognized his musical talent early, and he received his earliest musical education at the village school which he entered in 1847, age 6. He studied music in Prague's only Organ School at the end of the 1850s, and gradually developed into an accomplished player of the violin and the viola. Throughout the 1860s he played viola in the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra, which from 1866 was conducted by Bedřich Smetana. The need to supplement his income by teaching left...