Imperceptibly we have passed from technical analysis into personal inventory. And indeed, all Dvořák's peculiarities of style may be viewed as the inevitable manifestations of a nature at once rich and naïve. His music makes a delightfully frank appeal. It is never somber, never crabbed, never even profound. It breathes not passion, but sentiment. It is too happily sensuous to be tragic, too busy with an immediate charm to trouble about a remote meaning. Even when he is moving, as in the Largo of the New World Symphony, is it not with a gentle, half-sensuous pathos, a wistfulness more than half assuaged by the wooing sweetness of the sounds that fill our ears? To him music is primarily sweet sound, and we shall misconceive his aim and service if in looking for something deep in him we miss what is, after all, very accessible and delightful for itself--the simple charm of his combinations of tone.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.--Dvořák's fecundity is surprising. He has written cantatas, oratorios, a mass, a requiem, and hymns for chorus and orchestra; five symphonies, five overtures, four symphonic poems, the well-known Slavonic Dances and Rhapsodies, concertos for piano, violin, and violoncello, the inimitable Suite, op. 39, the Symphonic Variations, op. 78, and other orchestral works of smaller proportions; seven string quartets, a sextet, three trios, a terzetto for two violins and a viola, two string quintets, a piano quintet, a piano quartet, a sonata for violin and piano, and a serenade for wind instruments; and, finally, many piano works and songs. He is at his best in his orchestral and chamber works, of which the following are typical: the Slavonic Dances, op. 46 and 72, the Slavonic Rhapsodies, op. 45, the Suite, op. 59, the Symphony, «From the New World,» op. 95, and the Scherzo Capriccioso, op. 66; the Sextet, op. 48, the Quartet and Quintet on negro themes, op. 96 and 97, the Piano Quintet, op. 81, and the Piano Quintet, op. 87. Though these compositions lose much in transcription, they are all obtainable in four-hand piano arrangements. The piano music is somewhat unidiomatic except the later things, but the Mazurkas, op. 56, the Poetische Stimmungsbilder, op. 85, and the Humoreskes, op. 101, are worth knowing. Of the songs, nine of the best are published separately by the house of Simrock, and the two most popular ones, «Gute Nacht» and «Als die Alte Mutter,» are to be had in Schirmer's series entitled «Gems of German Songs.» A study of these will probably arouse a desire for more, and the student may buy the Gipsy Songs, op. 55, and the Love Songs, op. 83. The duets, «Klänge aus Mähren,» not very well known, are characteristic.