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| In memoriam
Joseph Suk 1874–1935
by Rosa Newmarch
The unexpected death of Dr. Joseph Suk, on
May 29, in his sixty-first year, has struck a mortal blow at that
organization long the delight of all lovers of fine chamber music:
the Bohemian (Czech) String Quartet. Only six months ago Suk wrote
the obituary of his old friend and colleague George Herold, who
was for thirty-four years the viola player of the Quartet.[1]
Now that of the original members only Karel Hoffmann, the leader,
remains (the ‘cellist Ladislav Zelenka joined them in 1913)
the future of the Quartet seems problematical.
Although English amateurs will most familiarly recall Suk’s
personality by his rugged head and sturdy figure as he sat, alert
and inspired, at the second desk of the Quartet, yet he pursued
many other activities in the world of Czech music. He was one of
the most efficient and best-liked ‘Rectors’ of the Prague
Conservatoire; but it is as a composer – the heir of Dvorák’s
art – that his compatriots will most permanently honour his
memory.
Born on January 4, 1874, at Kreocovice, South Bohemia, where his
father was both schoolmaster and choirmaster, he received a sound
elementary musical education at home before entering the Prague
Conservatoire at the early age of eleven. He passed his final examinations
in 1891, but stayed on for a year to become more proficient in chamber
music, under Wihan, and to work at composition under Dvorák,
whose daughter Otilie, he eventually married. Before leaving the
Conservatoire he founded the Bohemian String Quartet in co-operation
with three fellow students – Hoffmann, Nedbal, and Berger.
Suk’s youthful works are influenced by the later classical
models of Schubert, Brahms, and Dvorák. The Quartet in A
minor, Op. 1, and the Serenade for strings, Op. 6, belong to his
student days. At the time of his courtship and marriage he fell
under the spell of the romantic poet and novelist Julius Zeyer,
and composed incidental music for his dramatic fairy-tale ‘Raduz
and Mahulena,’ a Suite from which (Op. 13) became popular.
Zeyer pressed the young musician to supply music to his next play
‘Pod jabloni’ (‘Under the Apple-trees’), a love-idyll,
permeated by mystical feeling. In the composition of those two works
Suk showed the development of a rich lyrical vein. He also became
imbued with a deep sense of the remote and lovely atmosphere of
Slavonic legend and expressed it in his first symphonic poem ‘Prague,’
Op. 25.
Suk’s musical evolution was the result of circumstances rather
than of sudden inward impulses. The death of Dvorák in 1904,
followed by the unexpected loss of his young wife twelve months
later, left him with an outlook on life too gloomy for so young
a man. For a time the composer’s creative spirit seemed to
suffer a complete eclipse, and when the power to compose returned
to him his muse was still steeped in sorrow and pensive melancholy.
His second Symphony, designed as a memorial to his master and friend
Dvorák, became a dual threnody for the two best-loved presences
so swiftly and ruthlessly removed from his life. ‘Asrael’
– the title which he gave to the Symphony – was succeeded
by a series of very individual orchestral works, of large design
and difficult of execution – ‘A Midsummer Tale,’
‘Maturity,’ and ‘Epilogue.’ In these symphonic
creations we may watch the transmutation of a blind cry of personal
suffering into the expression of a deeper and more universal sympathy
with mortal grief. ‘Maturity,’ founded on a poem by Sova,
shows the gradual ascent towards the conquest of self-pity and vain
regret. The ‘Epilogue’ sets forth the ever-increasing
conviction that only in love and renunciation lies the salvation
of humanity. Though Suk probed the depths of suffering, these elegies
are quite free from any touch of sensationalism or funereal pomp.
His lesser works such as his cycle of piano pieces, ‘Things
lived and dreamed,’ so finely appreciated and delicately handled
by the late Fanny Davies, were also in a wistful mood.
Who is left to write an elegy for this ‘most musical of mourners’?
The feelings of his fellow workers and compatriots are best expressed
in the official announcement of his death, issued by the Society
of Arts (Umelecka Beseda) of Prague which lies before me as I write:
‘His whole people loved him. He has left to the world creations
of incomparable purity, of rare beauty, which the Czecho-Slovak
nation will proudly place among the most precious possessions of
its spiritual heritage. With unutterable sorrow we take leave of
our beloved master: Non mors, sed imago mortis – anima aeterna.’
Musical Times, July 1935
Notes
1. The article appeared in Tempo, the
organ of the musical branch of the Czech Society of Arts (Hudebni
Matice). [back]
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