String Quartet No. 9 (Dvořák)

Background#

The work was composed in the months after the deaths of two of Dvořák’s children, Ruzena (died 13 August 1877 at 10 months of age) and Otakar (died 8 September 1877, years old). It is dedicated to Johannes Brahms: Dvořák had won the Austrian State Prize fellowship prize three times in four years (1874, 1876, and 1877), and after this third success, Brahms, one of the members of the committee responsible for awarding the stipend, referred Dvořák to his own publisher, Fritz Simrock. Dvořák revised it in 1879, and Herbert and Truffit suggest that the first performance may have been given by the Quartetto Heller (Giulio Heller and Alberto Castelli (violins), Carlo Coronini (viola), and Carlo Piacezzi (cello)), in Trieste, on 14 December 1881.

Structure#

The work is composed in four movements:

External links#

• “String Quartet No. 9”, antonin-dvorak.cz, accessed 29 May 2018
• , Prague String Quartet