Symphony No. 8 in G Major

Dvořák never titled his symphonies, but the Symphony No. 8 (1890) could have been designated the "Pastoral", for like Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony ("Pastoral"), it evokes a landscape of bird calls, hunting horns and carefree, rustic dances. Early on, the work was called the “English” Symphony because it was published by the London firm Novello. This occurred after Dvořák’s German publisher, Fritz Simrock, offered the composer only 1,000 marks for the Eighth Symphony, after paying him 3,000 for the seventh. (Dvořák’s shorter works were the real moneymakers and symphonies were discouraged.) After the sombre, Brahms-ian Seventh Symphony, the eighth, according to Dvořák, was “different from the other symphonies, with individual thoughts worked out in a new way”. This referred to his musical evocation of the Czech countryside he so loved. But a darker undertone intrudes on the bucolic atmosphere, starting with a doleful G-minor introduction in the cellos. A solo flute bird call soon intervenes, which develops into the buoyant main theme of the first movement. Bird calls reappear in the wistful “Adagio”, which biographers frequently describe as a musical portrait of Dvořák’s garden at Vysoká, his country home. The pastoral tone continues in the third movement, a lilting waltz, which leads to a rousing trumpet fanfare that announces the finale, a delightful set of variations; the main theme’s first three notes echo the flute’s avian motif in the first movement.