Antonín Dvořák
Quintet in E-flat major for Two Violins, Two Violas, and Cello, Op. 97, “American”
- Composed in 1893
- Duration: 32 minutes 

The Czech composer Antonín Dvořák was brought across the ocean to direct the National Conservatory of Music in New York in no small part because Jeannette Thurber, the institution’s founding patron, hoped that he would help to establish a genuinely “American” style of music. He took this commission seriously, and in May 1893 he gave a famous interview in which he stated in no uncertain terms that “the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the negro melodies. . . . These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are America.”

The response to this proclamation was varied and vehement. There were racist reactions like those of the Second New England School composer John Knowles Paine, who saw the songs of African Americans as the product of an inferior race. There were those who suggested that most American composers simply didn’t know “negro melodies” well enough to do meaningful things with them. Then there were some, like pianist and conductor Benjamin Johnson Lang, who wanted the Czech composer to prove it: “I wish that Dr. Dvořák would write something himself, using themes from these plantation songs.”

Lang didn’t yet know that Dvořák (not actually a Dr.) had just completed a symphony “From the New World” whose sound and substance were much inspired by songs he learned from Harry Burleigh, a National Conservatory student whom the composer befriended. By the time responses to his interview were circulating, Dvořák was on his way to a summer sojourn in the Czech settlement in Spillville, Iowa. While there, likely with thoughts about what makes music “American” fresh on his mind, he wrote more new pieces: a String Quartet in F major (Op. 96) and a String Quintet in E-flat major (Op. 97), both of which often receive the subtitle “American” for their place of composition, and for their stylistic associations.

The public quickly reinforced the Americanness of all these works. The New York Times reviewer at a performance of the quartet and quintet in January 1894, for instance, suggested that they were “redolent of the cotton fields and the river valleys of the South,” and that the skipping, light-hearted spirit of the quintet’s final movement particularly recalled “music hall ditties.” Many commentators have also noted that the variation movement of the quintet uses a tune that Dvořák initially wrote as a setting of the poem “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” We should be hesitant to quickly label these as authentically “American” pieces written by a Czech composer after scant encounters with the sounds of the New World, but the discussion and creativity inspired by these works and by the composer’s words did have a lasting impact on music in the United States.

The viola, Dvořák’s preferred string instrument, leads the action in much of the quintet. The opening call in the first movement disintegrates into a sublime sequence of sweet harmonies before moving onto swinging, folky fare. In the tranquil coda, the themes are calmly stretched out into a quiet, accepting release, as if returning the melodies to the air that carried them over to the composer’s ears. The second viola provides a beating heart for the country-dance scherzo movement. This pulse is balanced by an emotional first-viola solo in the contrasting trio, which is perhaps the moment most reminiscent of American folk music in the work. The third-movement variation set departs from a subdued tune in G-sharp minor. The theme eventually shifts to A-flat major, where we hear the melody originally meant to go with “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” which Dvořák confidently told his publisher was “going to be the next American national anthem.” The finale conjures a celebratory parade, not only exhibiting that skipping “music hall fare,” but also violin triplet patter that is spat out over guitar-like viola pizzicatos with a rhythmic motor carrying the quintet to an exuberant conclusion.

Program note © Nicky Swett