Two Songs for Baritone, B13

These two short songs are a document of young Dvorak’s first encounter with the poems of Adolf Heyduk, whose oeuvre he subsequently used for his vocal works on several occasions. Both songs were written during the course of a single day, 24 October 1865, and, after the cycle Cypresses, they are the second surviving work by Dvorak in this genre. Yet, in their simplicity and fairly unremarkable melody, they cannot match the significance of Cypresses. Dvorak dedicated them to a friend, from whose estate the autograph score was purchased by the state in 1919. It is not known whether they were ever performed in public, and no recording of them exists at present.