As a Catholic composer, Antonin Dvořák could be surprisingly ambiguous. His patriotic and political allegiance to his Bohemian homeland sometimes seemed to outweigh ecclesiastical matters in his creative imagination.
The swift, raucously percussive opening of his dramatic Te Deum (1892/93) might have been intended to attract the attention of a drowsy deity. Other, more traditionally conceived works, such as his Stabat Mater (1877), Mass in D Major (1887) and Requiem (1890), still mix ardour with unusual intimacy.
