Antonin Dvorak,
a next-generation composer of the Czech national tradition
was torn by the competing influences
of Viennese classical orthodoxy and his Czech
nationalism. Like Schubert, whom he greatly respected,
Dvorak had a very natural sense for chamber music
and that of the absolute kind, that is music of an
abstract nature without any ties to an explicit program
or story. He wrote his last two string quartets together,
one within the other. He started writing his String Quartet in
A-flat major, Opus 105 in New York
just before returning home to Prague
after his three-year appointment as director of the
National Conservatory of Music. Part way into the first movement,
Dvorak traveled home and he began to write
a new string quartet, his Opus 106.
After finishing this quartet, he resumed work
on his Opus 105, finishing both in 1895. Opus 105 is thus his last string quartet,
the last of 14. It's a work that captures Dvorak's
joy of returning home. As one would expect,
the references to his Czech culture are pervasive
and the tone of the work is impassioned and lively.
This celebratory picture, if you will, is not without significance.
Opus 105 captures a snapshot
of Dvorak's lifelong effort to integrate the
musical spirit of his homeland into a well-crafted
classical work. Earlier on, Dvorak’s compositional excellence as a composer of
absolute music drew the attention of many
including Johannes Brahms and the influential Viennese music critic,
Eduard Hanslick.
Brahms functioned almost as an agent for Dvorak's success
by connecting his music to Joachim,
the great violinist, conductor and composer. Both Brahms
and Hanslick had encouraged Dvorak to move
to Vienna. Hanslick once wrote,
"Your art requires a wider horizon,
a German environment, a bigger,
non-Czech public." Though flattered by this support
and enthusiasm, Dvorak was keenly aware of the condescension
that German-speaking folks showed towards the Czech people.
He'd also watched his countrymen suffer at the hands
the ruling Hapsburgs. Despite the tension posed by these cultural perspectives,
Dvorak was most successful in fully reconciling
his Czech voice with the Austro-Germanic
classical tradition as seen in this work. Take, for example, the first movement
in sonata form, where one can expect the most
thematic substance to be present.
The great quartet composers
of the classical era were good at many things,
among them the ability to develop
themes, and this happens largely
in the development section of the work.
Think of the expansive, nearly symphonic
outer movements of Brahms' Opus 51, number one quartet in C Minor,
where the thematic ideas are developed extensively.
Dvorak, a colleague and admirer of Brahms,
demonstrates his masterful ability to develop ideas
in the first movement of Opus 105 by taking
kernels of the first and the second
themes which are rhythmically distinct and
intensively playing them off of each other, even transforming them
to create a new thematic texture
before arriving at the recapitulation.
Now, the Czech side
of Dvorak is distinctly present in the scherzo
or second movement, as well as the finale.
In both cases, he draws upon
dance for inspiration. In the finale,