Page 43 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

We asked the Red Lodge Chamber Players and the Magic City Strings to play the Dvořák “American” Quartet in it. The result is on the website, tippe- trise.org. The “American” Quartet was the perfect piece: Dvořák wrote it for the underdogs, for Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants. Dvořák himself, as a Czech, was regarded as a gyp- sy by the Prague Symphony, and had to fight preju- dice all his life to become the legendary composer he suspected he might be. The uniquely American spirituals, hymns, and the sheer freedom of our wide-open ranges are evident throughout the piece, as is the scarlet tanager in the third move- ment, a bird which was bothering Dvořák in his
studio, so he wrote it into the quartet and it became an asset (a great way of dealing with difficulties).
The musicians were astonished, because they heard the supportive reverberation of a small, wood-pan- eled concert hall, as did the audience. But you could see everywhere around you, and the presence of the American West on every side of and above the musicians was the final psycho-acoustic contribution of the land to the music, as Dvořák’s “American” Quartet, written in 1893 in Spillville, Iowa, has for so many years contributed to the
myth of the American West.
2018 Summer Season 43