Antonín Leopold Dvo?ák ([?ant??i?n ?l??p?ld ?dv?r?a?k] (help·info), (often pronounced in English as [?dv????æk]; DVOR-zhahk) ; September 8, 1841 ? May 1, 1904) was a Czech composer of Romantic music, who employed the idioms and melodies of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. His works include operas, symphonic, choral and chamber music. His best-known works are his New World Symphony (particularly the slow movement), as well as his Slavonic Dances, American String Quartet, and Cello Concerto in B minor. Dvo?ák was born on 8 September 1841 in Nelahozeves, near Prague (then Austrian Empire, today the Czech Republic), where he spent most of his life. His father was a butcher, innkeeper, and professional player of the zither. Dvo?ák's parents recognized his musical talent early, and he received his earliest musical education at the village school which he entered in 1847, age 6. He studied music in Prague's only Organ School at the end of the 1850s, and gradually developed into an accomplished player of the violin and the viola. Throughout the 1860s he played viola in the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra, which from 1866 was conducted by Bed?ich Smetana. The need to supplement his income by teaching left Dvo?ák with limited free time, and in 1871 he gave up playing in the orchestra in order to compose. During this time, Dvo?ák fell in love with one of his pupils and wrote a song cycle, Cypress Trees, in attempt to woo the heart of Josefína ?ermáková. She married another man, however, and in 1873 Dvo?ák married her sister, Anna. They had nine children.