We will learn to pronounce it in two steps. He began composing at around the age of 21; his first compositions were simple, folk-influenced choral works for the various amateur choral societies he conducted. He was admitted to the Leipzig Conservatory.
Founded by Felix Mendelssohn in , the Leipzig Conservatory was considered one of the finest schools of music in the German-speaking world.
He hated his classes and dropped most of them within just a few weeks. He claimed his teachers to be old and pedantic. But mostly he hated the German-ness of Leipzig and the conservatory: what he perceived as the same intolerable arrogance of the Germans and Austrians who had ruled his Czech homeland for hundreds of years.
So he just walked away. Even a biographer as sympathetic as his fellow Czech Jaroslav Vogel can only write that:. On the strength of a series of entrance exams he was admitted to the Vienna Conservatory β again, one of the best music schools in the world β on April 1, There is no evidence that he was treated disrespectfully because of his nationality in either Leipzig or Vienna.
Things went sour between the Czechs and Austrians in when Austria revoked religious freedom in the Czech province of Bohemia. Members of the Bohemian diet revolted making them a revolting diet and they expressed their displeasure on May 23, by throwing two imperial Habsburg Regents and their secretary out of a third story the window of Hradcin Castle in Prague.
