Josef Suk’s ‘Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale “St. Wenceslas,”’ Op. 35a is a solemn and reflective work that pays homage to one of the most revered saints in Czech history. Composed in 1914, during the turbulent period leading up to World War I, the piece interweaves Suk’s personal sense of patriotism with the deep spiritual resonance of the 10th-century St. Wenceslas hymn. Utilizing a subdued and contemplative string orchestration, Suk captures both the pastoral tranquility and the underlying national pride that the chorale embodies. The result is a moving tribute, uniting traditional Czech musical heritage with Suk’s emotive, late-Romantic style.

Suk's musical style started off with a heavy influence from his mentor, Dvořák. The biggest change of Suk's style came after he reached a "dead end" in his early musical style (music played less of a role in Suk's life outside of his schooling), just before he began a stylistic shift during 1897–1905, perhaps realizing that the strong influence of Dvořák would limit his work. Morbidity was always a large factor in Suk's music. For instance, he wrote his own funeral march in 1889 and it appears significantly also in a major work, the "funeral symphony" Asrael, Op. 27. Ripening, a symphonic poem, was also a story of pain and questioning the value of life. Other works, however – such as the music he set to Julius Zeyer's drama Radúz a Mahulena – display his happiness, which he credited to his marriage with Otilie. Another of Suk's works, Pohádka (Fairy Tale), was drawn from his work with Radúz a Mahulena. The closest Suk came to opera is in his incidental music to the play Pod jabloní (Beneath the Apple Tree).

The majority of Suk's papers are kept in Prague. There is also a new catalogue of Suk's works that contains more manuscripts than any before it, some of them also containing sketches by Suk.

Suk said of himself: "I do not bow to anyone, except to my own conscience and to our noble Lady Music… and yet at the same time I know that thereby I serve my country, and praise the great people from the period of our wakening who taught us to love our country."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Suk_(composer) / License: CC BY-SA 4.0