marriage

While Dvořák’s career as a composer was flourishing, major changes were also occurring in his private life as well. He continued teaching the piano in the Čermák family home and began to form a close relationship with Josefina’s younger sister Anna. Anna Čermáková shared his love of music – she played the piano and she was regarded as a fine singer, performing her husband’s works later on. The pair were married on 17 November 1873 in the church of St Peter; Dvořák was thirty-two and Anna thirteen years his junior. According to the laws of the time, Anna had not yet reached maturity by the date of the marriage, however, she was in her fourth month of pregnancy. The newly-weds initially lived with Anna’s mother Klotilda Čermákova but, after a few months, they moved to a modest flat in Na Rybníčku street. There Anna gave birth to her first-born son Otakar in April 1874, and it wasn’t long before the arrival of daughters Josefa and Růžena. The family had very little money, and their friends even arranged a collection for them. Anna contributed to the meagre household budget with the occasional fee earned from singing in Prague churches, both in the choir and as a soloist. At this time Dvořák decided to accept the post of organist at St Adalbert’s church, where he remained for three years. The family’s chief source of funding, however, was still income earned from private tuition.