String Quartet No. 13 (Dvořák)

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Antonín Dvořák composed his String Quartet No. 13 in G major, Op. 106, B. (Burghauser number) 192, during between November and December 1895 (the year in which he returned from America, and in which his sister-in-law, and first love, died), finishing it apparently on December 9... — at which point he took back up his fourteenth quartet, his quartet in A flat major, which he had begun before this quartet... and finished that fourteenth quartet on December 30th of that year. The fourteenth quartet was published with the opus number 105.

The string quartet contains four movements and lasts around 35 minutes. The movements are as follows:

Allegro moderato in G major and 2/4 time
Adagio ma non troppo in E flat major and 3/8 time
Molto vivace in B minor and 3/4 time, more like a rondo with episodes in A flat major and D major for trios than a typical scherzo, as is more often found in this place in a string quartet in the Romantic music era.
Finale. Andante sostenuto – Allegro con fuoco The brief Andante sostenuto is in 4/4 "common" time, introduces a finale in 2/4 time, and interrupts it toward the end of the work. The finale is in the work's main key of G major.

(Dvorak's works have a confusing history of conflicting opus numbers, and so Jarmil Burghauser catalogued them more consistently in his book Antonín Dvořák; thematický katalog, bibliografie, přehled života a díla. (or, Antonín Dvořák: Thematic Catalog, Bibliography, Life and Work, first published in 1960. It is because of this that Antonín Dvořák's compositions have Burghauser numbers used sometimes to identify them, with 192 used for this quartet.

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[edit] References

Notes to the Chilingirian Quartet recording of the Quartet, made in 1991 (Chandos 8874)
Dvořák, Antonín. Five Late String Quartets. New York: Dover Publications, 1986. ISBN 0-486-25135-7. Reprint of N. Simrock of Berlin publications - string quartets nos. 10–14 originally published 1879-96.