Dvořák: String Quintet no. 3 in E-flat major, op. 97, “American”
In 1892, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák traveled to the United States to begin a three-year tenure as the Artistic Director and Professor of Composition of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Josef Jan Kovařík, who served as Dvořák’s secretary and translator, invited Dvořák and his family to spend the summer of 1893 in Spillville, Iowa. Kovařík grew up and had relatives in the rural community, which was largely populated by Czech immigrants. Dvořák thoroughly enjoyed his summer vacation, where he and his family (including his six children) spoke their native language with friendly locals in a countryside setting reminiscent of their homeland.
The feeling of being “at home” while living far away from home inspired Dvořák to compose a handful of blissful, melodious works that summer. Under no pressure from publishers, the Conservatory, or other commissioners, Dvořák began working on his “American” String Quintet a mere three days after finishing his beloved “American” String Quartet and the former was penned over the course of about five weeks in July and August of 1893. Scored for two violins, two violas, and one cello, the Quintet is a delightful companion piece to the Quartet, offering listeners a second iteration of tuneful melodies over clear forms with a richer texture thanks to the second viola that adds an extra inner voice to the standard string quartet configuration.
The Quintet had one of the most humble debuts in Dvořák’s career. Performed in the Spillville schoolhouse for a private audience in late August 1893, the makeshift group of players consisted of Dvořák (a violist) on first violin, Josef Kovařík (a violinist) on cello, and Kovařík’s father, sister, and brother on the remaining string parts. As humorously recounted by Kovařík, “Things went pretty badly in the first movement; the second was still worse, but what we did to the lovely variations in A-flat minor was really something awful.” The piece’s public premiere in January 1894 in the Chamber Music Room at Carnegie Hall with the [Boston] Kneisel Quartet and violist Max Zach was much more successful, as was its Czech premiere in Prague in October of the same year. Dvořák’s publisher Fritz Simrock enlisted none other than Johannes Brahms to look over the “American” chamber works and offer his edits and corrections. Brahms told Simrock, “…tell [Dvořák] how much his merry creations please me.”
Scholars have many ideas about what made Dvořák’s works from this period “American.” Dvořák encountered Black and Indigenous music in America and incorporated the spirit of their authentically American melodies (often built around pentatonic scales) and vivacious rhythms into his music while retaining his distinctively Bohemian voice. A touring group of Iroquois peoples performed what were billed as “medicine shows” in and around Spillville while Dvořák was in Iowa. Dvořák was captivated by the group and attended numerous performances of their show; the unison chant-like melodies and drumming rhythms that pervade Dvořák’s Quintet were likely influenced by and in tribute to the Iroquois performers.
Dvořák, a violist, makes frequent and effective use of the ensemble’s additional viola in the Quintet. Much like the beginning of his “American” Quartet, the viola states the first movement’s opening pentatonic theme in E-flat in a slow introduction that precedes a straightforward sonata form. The movement’s second theme in G minor, first played by the second violin, is noteworthy for its catchy “long-short long-short” rhythm that is the first of many drum-like motives that give the Quintet its signature rhythmic drive. The first movement concludes with a slow coda that reprises the blissful grandeur of its introduction.
A percussive motive from the second viola sets in motion the Quintet’s second movement, a driving ABA-form scherzo in B major. Its middle section in B minor serves as a featurette for the first viola, which luxuriates an arcing melody over plucked strings from the other players. The heart of the Quintet may lie with its third movement, a set of five elaborate variations bookended by a 32-bar theme. The first of the theme’s two strains is stated by the first viola in A-flat minor; the second strain in A-flat major, begun by the first viola and completed by the second violin, was a tune Dvořák intended to pair with the text to “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” when trying his hand at composing a new national anthem for the United States.
The Quintet merrily skips its way through its final movement, an ABACABA-form rondo that crafted its opening theme from the “long-short” rhythm in the first movement (listeners familiar with Dvořák’s music may hear similarities to his famous “Humoresque” in the opening theme as well). In speaking about his “New World” Symphony and the Spillville works, Dvořák stated, “I know I would never have written these pieces this way if I had not seen America!” The “American” Quintet has served as a love letter to the United States from a grateful guest who cherished and was transformed by his time in America.
Copland: Suite from Appalachian Spring
Dvořák’s deft ability to incorporate elements of his homeland’s folk music into Western forms and structures earned him international renown for creating meritorious works with a signature Czech/Bohemian voice. American art music, still in search of its voice in the late 19th century, enlisted Dvořák to lead the National Conservatory of Music in hopes that American composition students would follow the Czech master’s example and similarly create a unique national sound.
Aaron Copland is, for many, Dvořák’s American counterpart and the composer who fulfilled the National Conservatory’s mission of creating the American sound in Western art music. Not only did the two composers share a goal in capturing the national voice of their respective homelands, they are connected by only one degree of separation! Composer and teacher Rubin Goldmark studied composition with Dvořák at the National Conservatory during Dvořák’s tenure and later taught composition to a teenaged Aaron Copland (as well as a young George Gershwin!).
Born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn in 1900, Copland traveled to Paris in the 1920s to study with Nadia Boulanger, arguably the 20th century’s most influential and impactful composition instructor. Throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, Copland followed in the footsteps of modernist icon Igor Stravinsky and composed intellectual, angular, dissonant works (occasionally incorporating jazz elements) before transitioning to a more accessible musical language with broader appeal in the mid-1930s.
Other esteemed American composers similarly wrote works emphasizing sincerity, simplicity, cleanliness, and down-to-earth rusticity in hopes of reaching as many listeners as possible without pandering or sacrificing musical integrity. These utilitarian, New Deal-era virtues in art music were perhaps best exemplified in Copland’s suite from Appalachian Spring. Composed in 1943-44 for American choreographer Martham Graham through a commission from Washington D.C. arts patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Appalachian Spring premiered in 1944 at the fall festival of Coolidge’s namesake foundation at the Library of Congress. Performed in Coolidge’s namesake auditorium at the Library, the relatively small performance space necessitated modest forces, which resulted in a small cast of dancers (including Graham in one of the principal roles) accompanied by a 13-player chamber orchestra.
The ballet was an immediate success and earned Copland both the New York City Music Critics’ Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize in music in 1945. Copland excerpted and orchestrated the ballet into a suite for full orchestra, which had its premiere by the New York Philharmonic in 1945. The suite from Appalachian Spring for full orchestra is the most-often performed iteration of the work and it wasn’t until 1970 that Copland, at the urging of a friend, reorchestrated and published the suite in its original 13-instrument configuration.
The third of Copland’s three “American frontier spirit” ballets (preceded by Billy the Kid in 1938 and Rodeo in 1942), Appalachian Spring got its title from Graham, who was inspired by the phrase “O Appalachian Spring!” in “The Dance” section of The Bridge, an epic poem by Hart Crane. While originally in reference to the white veil of a cascading waterfall, the word “spring” took on a second meaning as Graham’s ballet took place in springtime. Graham was originally from the Pittsburgh area and considered Appalachia to be the preeminent source of America’s folk culture and the region which most authentically captured the pioneer spirit of the heartland.
The ballet’s scenario, in Copland’s words, described “…a celebration of the first settlers in springtime around a newly-built farmhouse in Pennsylvania in the early 19th century.” Exact plot points are rather ambiguous and chronicle a newlywed couple and their encounter with a Revivalist and his followers. However, the details of the plot are secondary to the feelings of tenderness, elation, and wonder that Copland and Graham created in their shared work. The seventh of the suite’s eight continuous sections features a theme and variations on the Shaker tune “Simple Gifts.” An offshoot of the Quaker religious sect, the term “Shaker” was an amalgamation of “Shaking Quakers,” appropriately named from the joyful dancing that was often an integral part of their worship services.
As scholars can cite the pentatonic scales and drum-inspired rhythms as American ingredients in Dvořák’s Quintet, they can similarly point to the lean textures, open chords, stylized square dances, and elevated fiddle tunes as American ingredients in Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Both works possess an abstract American essence beyond simple ingredients that connects listeners to America’s 250th anniversary and helps them reflect on the stories, people, and places that have shaped the shared American experience.
This concert is made possible in part by a generous grant from the South Dakota Arts Council. South Dakota Arts Council support is provided with funds from the State of South Dakota, through the Department of Tourism, and the National Endowment for the Arts.