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.