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Dvořák was born on September 8, 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. Antonín's parents recognized his musical talent early, and he received his earliest musical education at the village school which he entered in 1847. He studied music in Prague's only Organ School at the end of the 1850s, and gradually developed into an accomplished violinist and violist. Throughout the 1860s he played viola in the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra, which from 1866 was conducted by Bedřich Smetana. The need to supplement his income by teaching left Dvořák with limited free time, and in 1871 he gave up playing in the orchestra in order to compose. During this time, Dvořák fell in love with one of his pupils and wrote a song cycle, Cypress Trees, that expressed his anguish at her marriage to another man. However he soon overcame his despondency, and in 1873 married her sister, Anna Cermakova.

At about this time Dvořák began to be recognised as a significant composer. He became organist at St. Adalbert's Church, Prague, and began a period of prolific composition. In 1877, the critic Eduard Hanslick informed him that his music had attracted the attention of Johannes Brahms. Brahms contacted the musical publisher Simrock, who as a result commissioned Dvořák's Slavonic Dances. Published in 1878, these were an immediate success. Dvořák's Stabat Mater (1880) was performed abroad, and after a successful performance in London in 1883, Dvořák was invited to visit England where he appeared to great acclaim in 1884. His Symphony no. 7 was commissioned for London; it premiered there in 1885. In 1891 Dvořák received an honorary degree from Cambridge University, and his Requiem Mass premiered later that year in Birmingham.