Josef Suk

Josef Suk (composer)

Josef Suk was a Czech composer and violinist.- Life :Suk was born in Křečovice. He studied at Prague Conservatory from 1885 to 1892, where he was a pupil of Antonín Dvořák and Antonín Bennewitz. In 1898, he married Dvořák's eldest daughter, Otilie Dvořáková , affectionately known as Otilka...

 wrote the music for Julius Zeyer

Julius Zeyer

Julius Zeyer was a Czech prose writer, poet, and playwright.Zeyer was born into a father of German-French nobility, and mother of Jewish family, and learned the Czech language from his nanny. He was expected to take over the family's factory but instead decided to learn carpentering...

's mythological drama Radúz and Mahulena

Radúz and Mahulena

Radúz and Mahulena is Czech stage play by novel Julius Zeyer.- Story :Zeyer’s dramatic poem is one of the most beautiful love stories to have graced a Czech stage. Classical fairy-tale motifs wed with mythological references joined together with bravado through a metaphorical language...

 in 1897-8. In 1899-1900, Suk extracted a four-movement Suite to this Pohadka (or Fairy Tale). Zeyer greatly impressed Suk. The style and orchestration is much affected by Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

 (who was ten years Suk's elder), although Suk's writing is somewhat simpler. There are harmonic sideslips and turns of phrase that could almost have come out of Strauss's A Hero's Life (1898), yet Suk's manner is essentially simpler (and has at its centre the same lyricism which also makes his earlier Serenade

Serenade for Strings (Suk)

Josef Suk's Serenade for Strings in E flat major, Op. 6, was composed in 1892.While Suk was studying under Antonín Dvořák at the Prague Conservatory, Dvořák noticed a melancholy strain in much of Suk's music, and recommended he write some lighter and more cheerful music...

 such a delightful piece). Dvorak thought this Suite "music from heaven". The Suite was revised in 1912, and remains one of Suk's most successful works.

The four movements are:

1. About the Constant Love of Raduz and Mahulena and Their Trials

2. Intermezzo. Playing at Swans and Peacocks

3. Intermezzo. Funeral Music

4. Runa's Curse and How It was Broken by True Love