A friend of his, with whom he was sharing lodgings, Moric Anger, lent Dvořák the money to pay off the binder and retrieve his score.
[1] In 1887 Dvořák revised the score, thinning out the rather dense orchestration.
The introduction to the final movement contains a four-note motif that Dvorák would quote some thirty-five years later in his opera Rusalka.
Musicologist David R. Beveridge has concluded that this theme owes its origins to Dvorák's spurning by his pupil Josefina Cermakova, which occurred at approximately the time that Dvorák was writing this symphony and which the composer was prompted to recall by the plot of the opera.
The work is scored for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.