Notes for: August 11, 2015
This String Sextet was part of a remarkable outpouring of compositions in which Dvořák, within a hectic three-year period, established his identity as the leading Czech composer and won the attention of the outside world.
Until 1875, Dvořák was a struggling composer, all but unknown outside of Bohemia, and publishing through a small publisher in Prague. Then his luck changed. He entered a competition for young composers sponsored by the Imperial Government in Vienna, in which Brahms was one of the judges. Dvořák won that year and in the two following years.
More important than the money was the fact that his music attracted the eye of Brahms, who became a friend and supporter. In August 1877, at Brahms’s invitation, Dvořák completed four Moravian Vocal duets and sent them to Brahms. Brahms was so impressed that he wrote on Dvořák’s behalf to his own Berlin publisher, Simrock. As a result, Simrock accepted the duets, and given the success of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, commissioned eight Slavonic Dances. Both works were published the following year, and were so well received that Simrock urged Dvořák to send more in the Czech idiom.
Dvořák’s response was immediate and productive, and within 12 months Simrock published three Slavonic Rhapsodies, the Serenade for Wind Instruments, the Tenth Quartet, two sets of songs, more Moravian duets, and this String Sextet. The String Sextet, composed in only two weeks in May 1878, was particularly successful; after its premiere performance in Berlin in November, it became Dvořák’s first chamber work to be played throughout Europe. After years of lonely struggle, Dvořák was at last economically secure and an international figure.
Czech folk influences are heard in the sextet in a number of ways. In the words of Otakar Sourek, a Czech Dvořák specialist: “Each theme pulses with strong Slavonic life-blood; each thought is colored by national feeling and national ornamentation; each folk mood is of the simplest and most sincere type; not perhaps profound, but full of a fascinating and fervent lyricism.”
While Dvořák did not use specific folk songs here or in his other chamber works, many of his themes have a folk-like character. For example, the two themes of the first movement, allegro moderato, incorporate structural characteristics of Czech folk song. Thus, the first theme is marked by the repetition of a single note before the continuation of the phrase. The second theme begins with an initial upward leap followed by a leap back to the first note.
Further, Dvořák uses as his second movement a dumka, a Czech elegy generally melancholy in mood but interrupted by contrasting episodes faster in tempo or contrasting in humor. In this case, the main section, poco allegretto, is a slow polka tinged with melancholy. This is succeeded first by a song, gypsy in coloring, and then by a sweet-sad lullaby.
The third movement is a furiant, a fast Czech dance in triple meter with frequent syncopated accents on the weak beat of the measure.
Finally, the fourth movement is a mournful theme with six variations. The theme, allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino, and the first five variations reflect another characteristic of Czech folk music - a wavering of tonality between minor and major modes. The sixth variation abandons the melancholy mood, and brings the sextet to a brilliant conclusion.