Humoreske antonin dvorak biography

In the summer of Dvořák conceived a plan to develop the ideas in his Scottish Dances for piano from and, at the beginning of August, he wrote a sketch for a new cycle entitled “New Scottish Dances”.

The musical ideas he introduced into these piano pieces, however, were so diverse that they ultimately had little in common with the dance genre, essentially sharing only its basic characteristic: a 2/4 time signature and regular eight-bar period.

Humoreske antonin dvorak biography

The composer thus decided to abandon his original title and renamed the whole cycle Humoresques. This title should not be taken too literally; the individual parts of the cycle represent a bright palette of moods, from cheerful and dance-like, to dreamily melancholic.

The majority are based on musical motifs taken from the composer’s American sketchbooks, where he had jotted down ideas as they occurred to him during his time in the United States. For instance, Dvořák had made a note in New York on New Year’s Eve relati