Antonin Dvořák (1841 - 1904)
String Quartet No. 9 in D minor, Op. 34
Terzetto in C major, Op. 74
Antonin Dvořák
was born in 1841, the son of a butcher and innkeeper in the village of Nelahozeves, near Kralupy
in Bohemia and some
forty miles north of Prague. It was natural that he
should follow the example of his father and grandfather by learning the family
trade, and to this end he left school at the age of eleven. There is no
reliable record of his competence in butchery, but his musical abilities were
early apparent, and in 1853 he was sent to lodge with an uncle in Zlonice,
where he continued an apprenticeship started at home, learning German and
improving his knowledge of music, a rudimentary skill in which he had already
acquired at home and in the village band and church. Further study of German
and of music at Kamenice, a town in northern Bohemia, led to his
admission, in 1857, to the Prague Organ School, from which
he graduated two years later.
In the years
that followed, Dvořák earned his living as a viola-player in a band under
the direction of Karel Komzak which was to form the nucleus of the Provisional
Theatre Orchestra, established in 1862. Four years later Smetana was appointed
conductor of the opera-house, where this Czech operas The Brandenburgers in
Bohemla and The Bartered Bride had already been performed. It was
not unti11871 that Dvořák resigned from the theatre orchestra, to devote
more time to composition, as his music began to draw some favourable local
attention. Two years later he married and early in 1874 became organist of the church of St Adalbert. During this
period he continued to support himself by private teaching, while busy on aseries
of compositions that gradually became known to a wider circle.
Further
recognition came with the award of a Ministry of Education stipendium by a
committee in Vienna that
included the critic Eduard Hans1ick and Brahms for a number of compositions
submitted to the committee in 1874. The following year Dvořák failed to
win the award, but was successful in 1876 and again in 1877. His fourth
app1ication brought the personal interest of Hans1ick and Brahms and a
connection with Simrock, the latter's pub1isher, who expressed a wish to
pub1ish the Moravian Duets and commissioned a set of Slavonic Dances for
piano duet. These compositions won particular popularity. There were visits to Germany, as well as
to England, where he
was always received with greater enthusiasm than a Czech composer would ever at
that time have won in Vienna. The series of
compositions that followed secured him an unassailable position in Czech music
and a place of honour in the larger world.
Early in 1891
Dvořák became professor of composition at Prague Conservatory. In the
summer of the same year he was invited to become director of the
Nationa1Conservatory of Musician New York, a venture which, it was hoped, would
lay the foundations for American national music. The very Bohemian musica1
results of Dvořák's time in America are well known. Here he
wrote his Ninth Symphony, From the New World, its themes
influenced, at least, by what he had heard of indigenous American Indian and
Negro music, his American Quartet and a charming Sonatina for
violin and piano. In 1895 he returned home to his work at the Prague
Conservatory, writing in the following year a series of symphonic poems and
before the end of the century two more operas, to add to the nine he had a1ready
composed. He died in Prague in 1904.
The Quartet
No.9 in D minor, Opus 34, was completed in late 1877 and dedicated to
Brahms. The quartet was revised in 1879 and first performed in Prague on 27th February 1882. The period
of composition came soon after news of the further Vienna grant
offered him, with the possibility of the publication of the Moravian Duets through
the agency of Brahms and his publisher Simrock. The work shows complete
technical assurance, its first movement tinged with a certain melancholy, as
memories of the death of his daughter still recurred. The thematic material and
its treatment sometimes recalls Schubert, with elements of the same composer's
'heavenly length', leading to a histrionic conclusion. The second movement, Alla
polka, is a now characteristic replacement for the expected scherzo,
essentially a folk-dance with a contrasting trio section. This leads to a
meditative slow movement of great beauty, which includes finally reminiscences
of the first movement. The last movement, in tripartite sonata-form; starts
with an energetic rhythmic figure that gives rise to rapid figuration in
accompaniment and development.
Dvořák
wrote his Terzetto inC major, Opus 74, in 1887, designing it originally
for the amateur violinist Josef Kruis, a chemistry student lodging in the same
house in Prague, and his
teacher, the violinist Jan Pelikan. In the event Kruis found the part assigned
to him beyond his technical ability, and Dvořák then w rote music of a
simpler cast, the Bagatelles, Opus 75a, also scored for two violins and
viola, although subsequently arranged by the composer for violin and piano
under the title Romantic Pieces, Opus 75. The Terzetto opens in a
characteristically lyrical Bohemian mood, contrasted with darker hued music
that introduces an element of agitation. The slow movement, breathing a spirit
of rural serenity, the peace of the Bohemian countryside, follows at once, its
first thematic material framing a central section of leaping dotted rhythms.
The third movement is a Scherzo, a furiant, accompanied at first by the
plucked strings of the viola, a rhythmic and energetic dance to which the
gently lilting Trio provides a clear contrast, before the return of the Scherzo,
with its sense of urgency. The Terzetto ends with a theme and
variations. After a dramatic opening, the theme is heard, followed by a series
of variations that have their own moments of dramatic tension in a texture in
which the absence of a cello is never for a moment noticed, while tonality
shifts to reach a final C minor.