These so-called symphonic tone poems utilize rich orchestral colors and musical motives associated with different characters to tell the story. Antonín Dvořák wrote five such pieces in 1896, including The Golden Spinning Wheel. Yearning to return to his Czech roots, Dvořák drew on stories from Karel Jaromír Erben’ s poetic ballads, and his musical motives in the symphonic tone poems closely mirror the declamatory style of the Czech language.
The Golden Spinning Wheel received its first full public premiere in London, with Hans Richter conducting. Based on Erben’ s poem by the same name, the work portrays a dramatic story full of gruesome crimes, deception, love, magic, and justice. While riding in the countryside one day, a king stops for water and meets Dornička, a beautiful village girl who is sitting at her spinning wheel. The king falls in love with Dornička and asks her stepmother to bring her to the castle to marry him. What follows is an astonishingly evil plot between the stepmother and her own unwed daughter( Dornička’ s stepsister). On the way to the castle, the stepmother and stepsister violently murder and dismember Dornička, and the stepsister hides Dornička’ s severed feet, hands, and eyes in her luggage. She then marries the unsuspecting king, who is called away to war shortly after the wedding.
An old man who practices magic finds Dornička’ s remains in the forest and decides to bring her back to life. In exchange for a golden spinning wheel, distaff, and spindle, Dornička’ s stepsister willingly surrenders the missing limbs to the old man. Unbeknownst to the stepsister, the golden spinning wheel is enchanted, and when the triumphant king returns from battle the wheel sings a song that reveals the treacherous plot. Infuriated, the king returns to the forest where he is joyously reunited with the resurrected Dornička. The evil stepmother and stepsister are thrown to the wolves, the golden spinning wheel magically disappears, and Dornička and the king live happily ever after.
divine inspiration the legacy of the st. francis missal
On view through February 7, 2027
PAULA MAUST is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Peabody Conservatory. She is the author of Expanding the Music Theory Canon and performs extensively as a harpsichordist and organist.
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