The Orphan, Op. 5, B24
Opus number
5
Burghauser catalogue number
24
Date of composition
November, December (?) 1871
Premiere - date and place
10 or 19 April 1872, Prague
Premiere performer(s)
Anna Kupková + ?
First edition
Urbánek, 1883, Prague
Author of the text
Karel Jaromír Erben
Duration
approx. 6 min.
In November 1871 music critic Ludevít Procházka published an article in Hudební listy in which he took issue with the fact that Czech songs were being neglected – by both composers and performers. In order to spark the interest of composers and audiences in this genre, he decided to organise the occasional “informal evening of songs”, which would introduce new songs by domestic composers. Dvořák responded to Procházka’s appeal by writing, alongside Songs on Words by Eliška Krásnohorská, a musical setting of the ballad by Karel Jaromír Erben The Orphan’s Bed. This was Dvořák’s first encounter with Erben’s poems and ballads, to which he later returned on several occasions. The composer chose a strophic form for The Orphan’s Bed, where two stanzas of text always correspond to one musical stanza. The latter is repeated three times, each time with small declamatory and recitative changes. This is the longest song in the composer’s entire song oeuvre. The work was first published in 1883 by Prague-based publisher František Urbánek and bore the title The Orphan.