String Quartet No. 12 (Dvořák)
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The String Quartet No. 12 in F, Op. 96, B. 179, nicknamed the American, is one of the most popular pieces of chamber music by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák.
The Quartet is scored for the usual complement of two violins, viola, and cello, and comprises four movements:
- Allegro ma non troppo
- Lento
- Molto vivace
- Finale : vivace ma non troppo.
Dvořák composed the Quartet in 1893 during a summer retreat from his teaching post in New York. He spent his vacation in the hamlet of Spillville, Iowa, which was home to a Czech immigrant community. The quartet was written around the same time as the New World Symphony, the crowning masterpiece of Dvořák's years in the United States. Like the Symphony, the Quartet is said to be inspired by local American melodies but these themes are never directly quoted. Instead, Dvořák translated these musical materials into his Czech idiom. In the second movement, a listener may detect the melancholic longing of an African American spiritual, a sentiment with which the homesick Dvořák sympathized. The spirited third movement imitates the rhapsodic song of an American bird, and in the final movement, the composition strongly suggests the presence of a railway or train.
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