Dvořák, Antonín

comprising extensive working drafts of the opening sections of the first three movements, in short score with deletions and alterations, notated in black ink on up to eighteen staves per page, and including a rejected twenty-four-bar opening for the third movement, annotated by the composer with indications of the instruments ("Cello...Piano...Violin Solo...2) and significant changes of key ("Des...Cis moll...E dur...A moll...")

4 pages, folio (332 x 258mm), 18-stave paper, [Prague], 26 November 1890, light overall browning, a few tiny holes, some creasing and dust-marking where folded

There is some browning to the paper, heavier at the edges. There is also some chipping and one tear to the leading edge of the first leaf (not touching the text). However, the paper is fairly thick and does not seem particularly fragile, nor likely to tear further. The bifolio was folded twice and the last page was evidently on the outside, as there is some wear at the folds. There is splitting to the main hinge, but the leaves are not separate.
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THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT BY DVORAK EVER TO HAVE APPEARED AT AUCTION. It would seem to be unrecorded: we have traced no reference to it in the literature on Dvořák.

The "Dumky" Trio, is one of Dvořák's best-loved chamber works. It comprises six movements or Dumkas (see below), holding a place in the composer's output analogous to the "Slavonic Dances" in the orchestral repertory. The beautiful second dumka in particular, with its Schubertian contrasts of major and minor, must count as one of the highlights of Dvořák's chamber music.

The manuscript shows Dvořák's first conceptions of the openings of the first three movements. It comprises lengthy continuity drafts of melodies and their developments, rather than a collection of disparate short sketches. Dvořák has written all the main themes, marking the entrance of the different instruments and the striking key changes.   There are many important divergences from the final versions. Dvořák provides continuity drafts for approximately the first half of each movement: only the later alternations and repetitions of these contrasting sections remained to be written. This is evidently the manuscript in which he essentially composed the music of bars 1-71 of the first movement and bars 1-83 of the second movement. There are three successive sketches for the third movement: the first containing material later rejected, the second containing the main melody, but repeated differently from the final version, and the third sketch giving the continuous draft of bars 1-99.

The "Dumky" Trio does not follow the usual four-movement format of classical chamber music, but is instead built up from a series of six highly formalized dances or dumky, each in a different key. Otakar Sourek points to the striking contrasts between passages of a "pensively elegiac character" and the "whirling gaiety" of the Czardas as the major structural principle (The Chamber Music of Antonín Dvořák, 1956, p.161). A note in the first edition explains that dumka is an untranslatable Ukrainian word for a type of melancholy folk poetry. Dvořák had previously used this title for movements of a ruminative character, with contrasting middle sections, including in a single piano piece Op.35 in 1876, the string sextet Op.48, the string quartet Op.51 and the piano quintet Op.81. This Trio was the first work exclusively built from a series of dumky; others are found in Moniuszko's Halka, Mussorgsky's Sorochintsky Fair and Tchaikovsky's Dumky for piano, Op.59.

Dvořák's continuity sketch is apparently the earliest known autograph source for the work. The date given by Sourek for the completion of the first dumka is 30 November 1890.  In his thematic catalogue of the composer, Jarmil Burghauser (1996) records a later sketch dated 23 January 1891 and the autograph manuscript of the final version of the Trio dated 12 February 1891, both in the Czech Music Museum in Prague, but not the present manuscript (Burghauser no.166). The Trio was one of the few pieces Dvořák himself performed as a pianist: he played it forty-one times on a farewell tour of Bohemia and Moravia, just before his departure for America. It was published by Simrock of Berlin as the Piano Trio Op.90 in 1894, while the composer was in America. It was among the works whose proofs were corrected by Johannes Brahms, who took a particular interest in Dvořák's music.  For another autograph item by Dvořák, please see lot 155.