Musicologica Olomucensia

Dvořák´s Second Symphony in B flat major, composed between August and October 1865, is unknown to us in its original form, having been reviser and reworked more than three times. This is shown by many layers of corrections and changes in the manuscript score (black, blue, and red ink, black, violet, and blue pencil), and sings of removed folios, of which only 13 are extant. By comparing the three layers of pagination, of which the oldest one, made in black ink, may be considered the original (the other ones are in red ink and, from page 29 on in the definitive pagination, pencil), and the remnants of cancelled bars, we can establish not only the original length of the score (250 pages - interpreting the last sign of removed folios differently from F. Bartoš in the Editor´s Note to the printed score with regard to motivic structure), but also the positions of removeed sections, and thus approximately the main contours of the original formal pattern. This is not only important, but also sufficient for an evaluation of the form and the place of this symphony in Dvořák´s creative development, though a full "performable" reconstruction is impossible.
While the middle movements preserve there original formal conception (with changes in subordinate parts only), the first and fourth movements, in sonata form, were changed substantially. Their original form treated the sonata scheme very freely. Anomalies were as follows. The introduction in the first movement did not differ in tempo and thematic material from the main body of the movement; it included the nucleus of the first main theme of the movement and its complementary element too (mm. 9-12 and 27-30; 63ff and 91ff). The exposition of the first theme was interrupted in the revision between pages 6 and 7 (mm. 72-73) - the only passage in which one can place the six removed pages indicated by pagination differences on page 10 (originally 16). Paradoxically enough, this may mean that the main theme was - as in the First Symphony - originally followed by its variative development, after which it returned to its first shape, which made the cut possible. A restriction of the now-illegible accompanying contrapuntal parts in the recapitulation could be regarded as compensation for this shortening in the exposition. Substantially changed is also the second theme especially in its first section (mm. 131ff in the definitive score). The cumbersome melody in the strings, using mostly only the two tones F and G in octave leaps, after four bars combined contrapuntal with motivic elements of the first theme, was sharply dissonant with the clarinet part, if the latter existed in the original (rewritten with violet pencil). This whole thematic complex, as well as the third, not very profiled theme, did not (and also in the definitive, reworked form does not) occur anywhere in the movement except at the corresponding places in the recapitulation. The development, consisting originally of three sections, was built on variations and derivations of the first theme. Each of these three sections - the middle of them was omitted (but all 69 measures are extant, published in the Annotazioni to the printed score, Artia, Prague, 1959) - began identically or very similarly, while the following development differed. I might speak of the "impulse" character of the thematic process as analogous to Dvořák´s practice in the B flat major and D major Quartets. Unclear and irrestorable is the transition to the recapitulation, where one folio is missing and another was returned to its original place after many changes (p. 40/41, before m. 420), like some additional ones further on. All these traits weaken very much the substantial thematic contrast in the sonata form.
The same could be said, with emphasis, about the fourth movement. It begins with an introduction in the very remote tonality (a 2nd below the main tonality) of A major, and its motif again takes part in the thematic process of the movement. The first theme consisted originally of three elements (A = m. 11ff, B = 37ff, and C = 53ff - see the formal scheme in the note 19 to the German text). In the reworked form, the elements B and C, in D major, were changed (transfunctioned) into the second theme, whose function in the original version was fulfilled by transposition of the elements B and A (in that order) to the dominant, F major. This section was omitted in the revision but is extant (4 folios numbered 176-82 and some cancelled bars on p. 161 in the definitive version - in all 70 bars; see Annotazioni). In this way the substantial thematic contrast of the sonata form was dissected into its two components, of which one - the motivic - was eliminated, and the contrast as a whole strongly weakened. Omitted was also the first section of the development after page 170 of the final version (2 folios are missing, extant are only one measure before this lacuna and 6 cancelled bars on p. 171 of the final version), and the end of the development, as well as the beginning of the recapitulation (6 folios, along with 9 cancelled bars on p. 178 of the final version, and 4 on page 179: in all 121 bars extant, published in the Annotazioni), which confirmed the conception of the exposition (see scheme of the form). The second development followed irregularly after this whole reexposition of the first and "second" themes, and the reexposition of the third theme was originally broadened by variation and probably development (all cancelled, only 4 bars after 391 extant - the last lacuna between 192 and 193 of the final version), followed by regular reexposition. "Unclear" is made to the transition between the recapitulation and the coda. As with thematic contrast, the characteristic traits are here dissociated. The modulation to C major, marking the beginning of the coda as well as the end of motivic similarities with the exposition, occurs in measure 450, but the Piu mosso corroborating its character 38 bars later (m. 488). This as well as other "unclear" transitions can be observed as an anticipation of the tectonic ambivalences known from Dvořák´s mature works.
All these irregularities and specific traits show the important position of this Second Symphony in Dvořák´s creative growth, and justify this incomplete and tentative construction.
(English by author and D. Beveridge)