Beauteous interlude
Commenter “Philip” brought up the composer Dvorak in the comments of a previous thread today, and I replied by adding video of a well-known Dvorak string quartet known as the “American Quartet,” which has long been one of my favorites.
I loved it so much, listening to it again, that I thought I’d highlight it in a post of its own. What is it about this music that conveys such wordless emotion?
And why “American”? Dvorak was Czech, but he wrote the piece in 1893 during a stay in America as director of the National Conservatory in New York:
[Dvorak] spent his [summer] vacation in the town of Spillville, Iowa, which was home to a Czech immigrant community. Dvorák had come to Spillville through Josef Jan Kovarík who had finished violin studies at the Prague Conservatory…He told Dvorák about Spillville, where his father Jan Josef was a schoolmaster, which led to Dvorák deciding to spend the summer of 1893 there.
In that environment, and surrounded by beautiful nature, Dvorák felt very much at ease…
Dvorák sketched the quartet in three days and completed it in thirteen more days, finishing the score with the comment “Thank God! I am content. It was fast.”…The American Quartet proved a turning point in Dvorák’s chamber music output: for decades he had toiled unsuccessfully to find a balance between his overflowing melodic invention and a clear structure. In the American Quartet it finally came together. Dvorák defended the apparent simplicity of the piece: “When I wrote this quartet in the Czech community of Spillville in 1893, I wanted to write something for once that was very melodious and straightforward, and dear Papa Haydn kept appearing before my eyes, and that is why it all turned out so simply. And it’s good that it did.”
I think what I respond to in the piece is indeed its many gorgeous melodic themes, and yet I don’t think it stints rhythm, either.
And so, without further ado, I bring you:
thanks
Spillville, population 367. I spent a number of summers bicycling through towns like that and smaller in Iowa. You could ride county asphalt roads for 15 to 30 min. without seeing a car. I didn’t realize, until I spent a year in college in the eastern seaboard, how fantastically green the Iowa countryside was in the summer. All brilliant green in a variety of shades. I’m am miffed that no one told me about Dvorak in Spillville, since it was near by, and I did have a bit of a music education.
Just before reading this, I pulled out a CD of film composer Bernard Herrmann’s “greatest hits.” His father was a Russian Jew. I thought I remember reading that he was inspired by Bela Bartok, but only found partial confirmation of that. A website on film scoring claimed that the most influential composers for film composers are Bartok, Stravinsky, and Dvorak.
Of course, before there was film, people composed for opera. My brother, a huge opera fan and a film history buff, claimed that Puccini almost certainly would have fit right in as a film composer. I have an old CD of Verdi’s overtures that is lovely, that I must try to find.
Yes, I have always loved that string quartet. Of course, Dvorak’s masterpiece is the New World Symphony- probably one of the 10 most popular symphonies ever composed- also part of his work while in America. If you haven’t listened to any Dvorak at all, start with that.
You mean he was in Iowa and he didn’t write a song about River City that rhymes with “P”?
😀
Hi Neo, long time lurker here. Your “American” question reminded me of either a video lecture or written version of Leonard Bernstein commenting on Dvorak’s New World Symphony. Found this 20 minute Bernstein recording on Youtube that some may find interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79D5sOD5duE
A beautiful piece, you are so right. As chance would have it, I am going to hear two different Dvorak pieces tonight. But I was also intrigued by the artwork with your video, because it looked so Andy Wyethy. Well, for good reason, I discovered.
Here is another Wyeth I’ve always liked. https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=LwGzcMkX&id=522F1BEA3ACF2E204F1E4C1B01BC1149F7C29BBA&thid=OIP.LwGzcMkXPvdjx6oCT-HnHQHaDW&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fc2.staticflickr.com%2f4%2f3551%2f5697354435_9e25e32960_b.jpg&exph=463&expw=1024&q=Andrew+Wyeth+Public+Sale&simid=608011589070489052&selectedIndex=0&ajaxhist=0
I wanted to post other Dvorak links, but I will try to restrain my enthusiasm. (Slavonic Dance 4, Humoresque 7, etc.) A nice break from some of our current events.
I have a tendency toward philistinism, and have contributed nothing more than uncalled for cold water to a number of Neo’s artistic appreciation pieces. So I’m sensitive to that, I want to emphasize here that I am not sneering, and I am totally sincere in wishing to know what it is in particular that is attractive about this piece. Perhaps I don’t know enough musical theory to appreciate what precisely defines melody. But this piece seems anything but pastoral, or relaxed or melodic.
Again, as I am no critic of fine music I cannot critique it on the basis of its technical aspects; I can barely read music and have spent about 3 minutes on the study of minor chord forms and their “coloring”.
But far from being a tribute to America, having perhaps incorporated typically “American” musical themes or reflecting a relaxed and expansive atmosphere, it sounds to me instead, to be typical of much of that whiny violin concerto music I mentally tune out when it comes on the local classical music station: what I probably unfairly think of as Eastern European Anxiety Music … hopeless life and death in a dreary Prague alleyway … or something.
If there is anyone who can educate me on this – other than recommending I get a new set of genes – and point out how specific tonalities at certain times in this piece deserve appreciation, intellectual or emotional – either one … I’d be interested. Really …
DNW:
I think in music it’s pretty much a matter of taste. I don’t know enough about music to explain what I like about this except what I’ve already written. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about music could do it, but not me.
I think people either respond or they don’t. To me, music is a bit like a joke in the following way: if you have to explain, you’ve already lost your audience.
It’s okay for you to be unmoved by music, or certain kinds of music, that other people like. For example, except for a piece or two, I don’t much care for Mozart.
Well, my appreciation of classical music is pretty much limited to the usual suspects which “Time-Life’s Greatest Romantic Melodies” (or whatever) hawked on TV to our grandparents and made everyone embarrassed to admit liking. Even if your parents or grandparents themselves never “called now, for this beautiful collection”
As regards taste and familiarity, I suppose you are right. Not everyone is crazy for classical guitar, or chamber music. Your indifference to Mozart is a good example.
That said, and the embarrassment of liking popular and accessible “Romantic” symphonic music aside, the [in]famous 4th movement of Brahms Symphony No 1. in C minor, or the Pilgrims Chorus or Overture from Wagner’s Tannhauser, and the like, are probably guilty, if infrequent pleasures for most people who have any interest in classical music at all.
I think I’ll dig up that Richard III piece by Walton and give it a listen. Talk about pop “classical”
DNW, forget the categories!
No charge…. : )
Ha! Good advice. I had a psychotherapist [friend] inform me that I was an example of an “extreme categorizer”. For someone as casual about keeping things in their proper place as I sometimes am, it came as a surprise. But then there is the endless almost hypnotic fascination of the syllogism both categorical and hypothetical, and … well, good advice …
DNW,
Have you tried the Beethoven Symphonies? I don’t like all of them, but usually people find one or two that they like. 9 & 5 are the most famous, especially 9; but 3 and 6, Eroica and especially the Pastoral, are my favorites.
If violin is too screechy, the Bach cello suites are 100% cello. I own a couple recordings of them because I used to play them on the French horn. Not exciting, and perhaps an acquired taste, but kinda the opposite of a bunch of overactive violins.
For something fun and a composer that thinks outside the box, there’s Gershwin.
I’m thrilled to bits that this nice string quartet was written in Iowa, where I’m almost from!
My favorite performance of this quartet is by my neighbors in Boston the “A Far Cry” Chamber Orchestra. The 20+ member group specializes in 1. a VERY eclectic repertoir (Baroque, 12 tone screeds, lush romanticism, gypsy fiddling, new experimental, punk) and 3. performing without a conductor. The discipline required to do the latter allows them to (among other things) make a case for arranging things like string quartets for larger ensembles because each string section expresses itself as if it were a single performer. Perhaps the classical music philistine could appreciate the work if he does not have listen to a single violin playing.
The lento movement of the “American” is my all time favorite piece of chamber music.
CHECK OUT A FAR CRY DOING IT ON YOUTUBE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaD5iuXV5Io
I think one of the difficulties modern listeners have with classical music is of time/structure. Nearly everybody is conditioned to listen to music in bits of 31/2 minutes, the standard length of a pop song for the last 100 years. The parts of the classical repertoire that survive being shoved through that three-and-a-half sieve (such as big Tchaikovsky tunes) can be appreciated by anyone but it’s kind of like enjoying a gothic cathedral one piece of stained glass or one gargoyle at a time and not being able to take in the structure as a whole.
BTW what the main theme of the Lento of the “American” String Quartet most reminds me of is certain extracts from early American hymn books as sung by the Boston Camerata such as “Zion.”
“TommyJay on November 13, 2018 at 5:34 pm at 5:34 pm said:
DNW,
Have you tried the Beethoven Symphonies? I don’t like all of them, but usually people find one or two that they like. 9 & 5 are the most famous, especially 9; but 3 and 6, Eroica and especially the Pastoral, are my favorites. …”
Yes, you are quite right. I agree. I guess I’m on board with all of the “majors” we were exposed to in school and that would extend to Hayden, and Vivaldi, and of course Bach; this later whose works have been successfully transcribed for the guitar. And then of course there are some famous Baroque and late Spanish composers you will encounter in this regard. And I guess that I have the same taste as pretty much everyone else when it comes to the better known pieces by Debussy, or Prokofiev or Rimsky-Korsakov.
So if it’s Concierto de Aranjuez , or something equally well known I’m on board.
But the weepy wailing sound of violins, not so much, or accessible to me.
The edit function was not working. Haydn
Haydn. The greatest of them all, seems to me, though sometimes passed over; “Papa Haydn,” as Dvorak called him, above, talking about writing this quartet.
Lovely – Neo I learn so much here! I came for the politics, but the culture keeps me.
I travel a lot for work and I was just entering my room once when someone across the hall started practicing on a violin. I had never been so close to that before, and the musical vibrations traveled through my body. It took all I had not to knock on the door and ask to be allowed to just sit in the room. Absolutely powerful!
That said, my favorite instrument is the violin/fiddle, so the screeching (as cited above) is a feature, not a bug. Second fave being the piano (my grandmother had a player piano when I was very young).
As to Gershwin, the first time I heard Bethena I had to pull over (I was driving) because it overwhelmed me. I have a lot of learning for classical music ahead of me still. Given my love of traditional bluegrass/mountain music, it’s quite the juxtaposition.
I pulled out a CD of film composer Bernard Herrmann’s “greatest hits.” His father was a Russian Jew. I thought I remember reading that he was inspired by Bela Bartok, but only found partial confirmation of that. A website on film scoring claimed that the most influential composers for film composers are Bartok, Stravinsky, and Dvorak. –TommyJay
Confirmation achieved last night, TommyJay. Bartok’s String Quartet #4 is the soundtrack to Psycho. We all noticed it immediately. First and fifth movements.
Ok, with Neo’s permission, or tolerance. I will offer a fragment of a violin performance that while not classical, seems to me to be a classical example of a particular style, in a tradition set by Stephane Grappelli. The guy is obviously pretty good. And we are nearing the holidays when a few moments of goofy fun and musical good cheer are in order.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/N4zOi8h-Uds?start=58
If Neo recalls me referring to this before, she will please delete this comment.
DNW: He’s def good, but the silly dancing fille stole the spotlight. How could she be so charmante? How do French women do that? Why are we men so susceptible?? And how do they know it so well??? LOL Gotta luv the Taylor Swift lipstick.