String Quartet No. 12 (Dvořák)
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The String Quartet No. 12 in F, Op. 96, B. 179, nicknamed the American, is one of the most popular pieces of chamber music by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák.
The Quartet is scored for the usual complement of two violins, viola, and cello, and comprises four movements:
- Allegro ma non troppo
- Lento
- Molto vivace
- Finale : vivace ma non troppo.
A typical performance lasts around 30 minutes.
Dvořák composed the Quartet in 1893 during a summer retreat from his teaching post in New York. He spent his vacation in the hamlet of Spillville, Iowa, which was home to a Czech immigrant community. The quartet was written around the same time as the New World Symphony, the crowning masterpiece of Dvořák's years in the United States. Of his time in Spillville, Dvorak said "As for my new Symphony, the F major String Quartet and the Quintet (composed here in Spillville) -- I should never have written these works 'just so' if I hadn't seen America." In the second movement, a listener may detect the melancholic longing of an African American spiritual, a sentiment with which the homesick Dvořák sympathized. The spirited third movement imitates the rhapsodic song of an American bird, and in the final movement, the composition strongly suggests the presence of a railway or train.
The Quartet is also known as the Paganini Quartet, although this name does not suffice much popularity as the more commonly used nickname, American Quartet, does.
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