As a classical music buff, I knew that Czech composer Antonin Dvorak had written some memorable music during a brief stay in tiny Spillville, Iowa, in the late 1800s.
But that's all I knew about Spillville. I had no idea where in Iowa it was located, even generally, or how it got its name. (Did someone knock over a priceless vessel of wine?)
Then, while planning a road trip to visit friends in Iowa and Wisconsin last year, I spotted Spillville on a map — just a dozen miles from Decorah in northeast Iowa. So I plotted a course and arranged lodging to make it my first overnight stop.
Turns out that Spillville was named for one of its first settlers, Joseph Spielman, who arrived from Germany in the early 1850s. Bohemian and Swiss immigrants followed. They built functional and enduring structures: churches, a mill, and later a lovely ballroom along the Turkey River. Farmers thrived, families expanded. Somehow "Spiel" became "Spill" in the town's name, but not a whole lot else changed.
Today as you enter the well-off-the-beaten-track town of about 400, you first notice small, humble houses from the 1920s and 1930s, some with rooftop TV antennas — remember those? You notice the vintage bandstand in the town square, built as a soldiers' and sailors' memorial after World War I. You can't miss the tidy red-brick building labeled BILY CLOCKS, with what looks like a giant pocket watch mounted on a 10-foot post out front. This is the building in which Dvorak and his family lived in the summer of 1893, just after Dvorak had completed his "New World" symphony. What was their second-floor apartment today is an "all Dvorak" subset of the Bily Clocks Museum (more about it later).
While in Spillville, where some of his cousins had previously immigrated, Dvorak composed the String Quartet in F (the "American"), the String Quintet in E Flat and a sonatina for violin and piano. Word has it that he was an early riser and would walk the streets and pathways of the little town at daybreak, soaking up the sights, sounds and scents of nature to inspire his musical creations.
Before leaving for Iowa, I made sure to grab my "Dvorak's Greatest Hits" CD — it proved an ideal soundtrack during two hours of navigating the twisty, hilly roads between the four-lane expressways of Rochester and bucolic Spillville. And about a week later, as I headed back to the Twin Cities on the last day of my trip, the Largo movement of the "New World" symphony popped up on the CD player. I suddenly recalled my boys' choir days, and started singing the words that composer William Arms Fisher added to Dvorak's simple, beautiful melody:
"Goin' home, goin' home, I'm a'goin' home. Quietlike, some still day, I'm just goin' home."
