Autograph musical manuscript sketch leaf from the composer's Eighth Symphony

23 measures in total in short score. Notated in black ink on both sides of a fragment of rastrum-ruled music manuscript paper 239 x 62 mm., cut from a larger leaf, with 12 measures on recto and 11 on verso.

Unsigned and undated, but ca. 1889.

A working manuscript containing thematic material from the first movement of the symphony, with corrections and deletions.

Slightly worn and browned; minor staining to lower margin, slightly creased at horizontal fold; trimmed at lower margin, with some loss of notation to final 6 measures of recto and final 6 measures on verso.

Together with:
A bust-length postcard photograph of the composer, with "Printed in Germany" to verso. Dvořák's Eighth Symphony, op. 88, in G major, was first performed in Prague on 2 February 1890 by the National Theatre Orchestra, with the composer conducting. Burghauser 163. Sourek 109.

"In its formal aspect ... the G major symphony ranks among Dvořák's most independent and original symphonic works." Sourek: The Orchestral Works of Antonin Dvořák, p. 128.

"The influence of folk music is heard ... clearly in the Eighth Symphony ... with which Dvořák allegedly (Šourek) hoped 'to write something different from his other symphonies and shape the musical content of his ideas in a new manner'. The variety and diversity of those ideas is striking, and they are often expressed in a musical language peculiar to them (with imitations of natural sounds, pastoral subjects, signals, fanfares, the suggestion of a funeral march and the idiom of a chorale). Sonata form is loosely applied and gives way to a more rhapsodic unfolding of ideas, but musical coherence is maintained through related melodic motifs and above all by rhythmic structures. In both the enhancement of musical language and the relaxation of formal structure, the Eighth Symphony reflects for the first time in a large instrumental work the new poetic element in Dvořák's music after the spring of 1889.

With Smetana, Fibich and Janáček he is regarded as one of the great nationalist Czech composers of the 19th century. Long neglected and dismissed by the German-speaking musical world as a naive Czech musician, he is now considered by both Czech and international musicologists Smetana's true heir. He earned worldwide admiration and prestige for 19th-century Czech music with his symphonies, chamber music, oratorios, songs and, to a lesser extent, his operas." Klaus Döge in Grove Music Online

Autograph working manuscripts of Dvořák are quite rare, especially as relates to one of his most highly regarded works.