About this Piece

In 1875, when 34-year-old Dvořák composed his Second String Quintet, he was becoming a prominent figure in Prague music circles. He had spent his youth cultivating the “new” style of Liszt and Wagner in the face of opposition from conservatives in the musical establishment, later rejecting that style to develop the quintessentially Bohemian voice for which he would become known. Nothing symbolized the change more than his opera King and Charcoal Burner, which he composed in his German phase. The Prague Provisional Theater attempted to mount it in 1873, but it proved too difficult to perform and was dropped. Instead of making the hard parts easier, Dvořák threw the score out and composed entirely new music to accompany the same libretto, describing it as “national rather than Wagnerian.”

Embracing Bohemian nationalism would ordinarily have meant the abandonment of international ambitions  in favor of becoming a local favorite son, but it turned out to be the key to his widespread fame. Dvořák’s music won him Austrian state artist stipends in 1874 and 1875 and attracted the attention of Brahms, who was on the selection jury. Though Brahms was only eight years older than Dvořák, he had been famous for two decades. He used his influence to boost Dvořák’s career, getting him a publishing contract with the prestigious firm Simrock.

The Quintet in G that Dvořák completed in 1875 and called Op. 18 was composed for a chamber music competition sponsored by the Prague organization Artistic Circle. It won a prize and lavish praise from the jury for its “distinction of theme, technical skill in polyphonic composition, and mastery of form” and “knowledge of the instruments.” It consisted of five movements: the four we hear tonight plus an Andante religioso that had been adapted from a string quartet and would later become the Nocturne for Strings, Op. 40. Simrock published the four-movement work, now considered the definitive version, as Op. 77 in 1888. (Simrock often published early Dvořák works with deceptively high opus numbers, greatly annoying the composer, who did not want the public mistaking his youthful works for mature ones.)

The addition of double bass to the standard quartet adds sonority and a sense of space, particularly in the first movement. Dvořák, who had a Schubertian gift for melody and was often profligate with his themes, does more with less in the outer movements. Small motifs are combined into long sequences, repeated while the harmony changes around them or pitted against one another in counterpoint. The Scherzo and the Finale begin with (and are built to a great extent from) the same five notes, though the effect is drastically different because both meter and key are different. Even in the Poco andante, a movement of sweet warmth, a few phrases do most of the work.

The quintet is not so different in this respect from Baroque music. Vivaldi, for example, would have been right at home creating musical paragraphs from short phrases, but Vivaldi and his colleagues wrote significantly shorter movements than the extended sonata structures of the 19th century. It says much about Dvořák’s ability to develop his material that the music never becomes tedious regardless of how much repetition goes into its construction.

—Howard Posner