Notes for: July 27, 2010
From 1892 to 1895, Dvořák served as director of a new educational institution in New York City, the National Conservatory of Music, a predecessor to Juilliard. Desperately homesick for Bohemia, he sought relief by spending the summers of 1893 and 1894 in Spillville, Iowa, a farming community whose residents were of Czech stock. His stay in Spillville freshened his roots and inspired his productivity. In the three months of 1893, he composed two of his greatest chamber works – the “American” String Quartet and the String Quintet in E Flat Major, which we hear this evening.
While at Spillville Dvořák wrote a letter to a friend in Prague containing the following frequently quoted comment about the quartet and the quintet as well as the Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”) completed earlier in the year:
“I know that if I had not seen America I never should have written my new symphony or my string quartet or my quintet the way I did.”
Precisely what did Dvořák mean? How “American” are these works and in what way were they shaped by his experience in this country?
Ever since their first performances, listeners have “heard” in these works African-American and Native American melodies and rhythms. Thus, the melody of the slow movement of the “New World” Symphony is well known as the song “Goin’ Home,” and for years music lovers believed without foundation that Dvořák had used an authentic Negro spiritual. But with the exception of an adaptation in the first movement of the “New World” of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” the themes in Dvořák’s “American” works – including “Goin Home” – were original with the composer.
Dvořák himself underscored this point in a letter after returning to Europe:
“Omit that nonsense about my having made use of ‘Indian’ and ‘American’ themes – that is a lie. I tried to write only in the spirit of these national American melodies.”
A more difficult question, then, is the extent, if any, to which Dvořák incorporated into his original themes musical elements and idioms drawn from American ethnic sources. Here the evidence is ambiguous.
As a musical romantic and a committed Czech nationalist, Dvořák felt keenly that great music can grow only from the healthy soil of native folk music. Early in his visit to the U.S., consequently, he took an interest in both African-American and Native American music. Deeply moved by Negro spirituals, he predicted in an interview with the New York Herald that the future music of the U.S. would be founded on “Negro melodies.”
But the embarrassing truth is that Dvořák’s knowledge of African-American and Native American music was superficial and unscholarly and that his thinking was confused. In another interview with the New York Herald, he made the astonishing statement that “the music of the Negroes and of the Indians was practically identical,” and that both “bore remarkable similarity to the national music of Scotland.”
Actually, the common thread among these otherwise diverse idioms is their use of pentatonic themes – that is, melodies built on a scale of five intervals (as opposed to the seven of the major and minor scales) with no half-steps. While pentatonic melody is characteristic of African-American spirituals, it is also found in the folk music of such diverse countries as Scotland, Russia, China and central Europe. In fact, Dvořák had first heard pentatonic music as a boy in Bohemia, and had used it in his own music long before coming to the U.S. He continued to use pentatonic themes and other recurrent folk devices in the music he composed in the U.S., and Czech listeners understandably heard in his “American” works similarities with their own music.
The same ambiguity applies to the “Native American” dance rhythms often heard in this evening’s quintet. While in Spillville, Dvořák was impressed by a traveling troupe of Iroquois Indians who used their songs and dances to attract buyers for their herbal medicines. And, sure enough, three of the quintet’s movements feature repeated drum-like dotted (long-short) rhythms. However, Dvořák had used persistent dotted rhythms in music written well before his landing in New York.
On balance, then, one can conclude that while Dvořák was sensitive to elements common to American and Czech music, he did not know enough about the various American folk idioms to make deliberate use of them. The most one can safely say is that his existing inclination toward persistent dotted rhythms and pentatonic melodies was stimulated by what he heard in the U.S., and that he combined these elements with his characteristic Bohemian folk idiom. The music that he wrote here, in other words, was a mixture, compelling but unscientific, of Czech and American influences – blended and refined by his own remarkable originality.
The quintet begins with a long slow introduction in which the second viola anticipates the principal theme. Eventually the first violin introduces the theme, a pentatonic melody but with more Bohemian flavor than African-American. Dvořák then introduces the possibly Indian drumming rhythm over which the second violin presents the second theme. The rhythm then pervades the development.
The second viola opens the second movement, a scherzo but in duple rhythm, with another Indian-like drumbeat pattern. A number of strains, again more of Czech than Native American character, are blended in. The middle section, in a contrasting minor mode, is slower and more melancholy.
The third movement is a theme with five variations. The theme actually has two strains – one in the minor mode and one in the major. According to one source, the second strain was based on Dvořák’s sketch for a new American national anthem using the familiar words “My country, ‘tis of thee.” Try it – the words fit.
The finale is a rondo with the main theme in the dotted rhythm of the first movement. There are two contrasting episodes, the second of which one writer called “Bohemian” and another described as “typically American.”