In 1892 Antonin Dvorák came to the Unites States to serve as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. He stayed for three years, and won himself a reputation as a teacher, composer, and conductor. It was also during this time that he composed some of his best known and most loved works; these include the "New World" Symphony, the Cello Concerto, and this quartet in F major, also called the "American" quartet.

Dvorák wrote this quartet in three days while vacationing in a small Bohemian colony in Iowa. He was surrounded by pleasant farmers, friendly priests, and generous housewives; this would be a good explanation for the simple character of the piece. Perhaps being away from home helped him forget about the conflits between the predominant Austro-German tradition and the new Nationalistic Bohemian tradition that he was trying to create. Now we hear music that does not belong to any school, but is purely Dvorak's own style.

RealAudio Performance:

Hear Movements 2, 3, & 4

Analysis:

There is a common misconception that Dvorak based the quartet's themes on African spirituals that he encountered while in America. However, according to one expert, "Dvorák merely adopted the idioms of slave song, and embodied them in melodies of his own creation for the purpose of showing American composers that they had a body of true folk-song in their own country which might be utilized in building up a national school." So Dvorak, the great Czech nationalist, was here trying to inspire nationalistic thought in american composers.

It is easy to hear why some think that the quartet is based on American folk melodies: the main theme of each movement is in the distinctive mode of F-G-A-C-D. This is a popular mode, and can be heard not only in African plantation songs and American Indian music, but all over the world (including Dvorak's native Bohemia). This interest in modal writing was not just a fancy of Dvorak's, either - in the same year, Claude Debussy wrote his famous String Quartet in g, which is also based on pentatonic modes.

User Submissions:

Here's what others have had to say about this piece... Press here if you want to add to this discussion.

Name: chephy
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Date: Friday, May 17, 2002 at 20:40:51
Text: The American Quartet is a great work, one of my favourite pieces of all times! To all who liked it, try other interpretations. E.g. by Tokyo String Quartet and Nakamura (probably my favourite version)... The 3rd movement... it just makes my heart beat faster, it's so emotional...

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