Antonín Dvořák's

Antonín Dvorák

Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...

 String Quintet

String quintet

A string quintet is a musical composition for a standard string quartet supplemented by a fifth string instrument, usually a second viola or a second cello , but occasionally a double bass. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who favoured addition of a viola, is considered a pioneer of the form...

 No. 2 in G major

G major

G major is a major scale based on G, with the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has one sharp, F; in treble-clef key signatures, the sharp-symbol for F is usually placed on the first line from the top, though in some Baroque music it is placed on the first space from the bottom...

, Opus

Opus number

An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

 77, (B. 49) was originally composed in early March, 1875 and first performed on March 18, 1876 in Prague at the concert of the Umělecká beseda.

It is scored for two violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

s, viola

Viola

The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...

, cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

, and double bass

Double bass

The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...

. First marked as Op. 18, it was later slightly revised in 1888 as opus 77. It has since been assigned the Burghauser number

Jarmil Burghauser

Jarmil Michael Burghauser was a Czech composer, conductor, and musicologist....

 49. Dvořák entered the piece in a competition and was awarded 5 ducat

Ducat

The ducat is a gold coin that was used as a trade coin throughout Europe before World War I. Its weight is 3.4909 grams of .986 gold, which is 0.1107 troy ounce, actual gold weight...

s for the composition. The work bears the competition's motto, "To my Nation," as its dedication.

Although the original work was scored in five movements, Dvořák later withdrew the second movement, entitled "Intermezzo," due to concerns that having two slow movements made the work too lengthy. This extracted movement was later reworked and republished as the Nocturne for Strings in B major, Op. 40 (B. 47). Some modern ensembles choose to restore the intermezzo when performing the work.

The work was published in 1888 by Simrock

Fritz Simrock

Friedrich August Simrock, better known as Fritz Simrock was a German music publisher who inherited a publishing firm from his grandfather Nicolaus Simrock...

, not under its original opus number 18, but as Opus 77.

Structure

The quintet consists of four movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

:

• I. Allegro con fuoco
• II. Scherzo
  Scherzo
  A scherzo is a piece of music, often a movement from a larger piece such as a symphony or a sonata. The scherzo's precise definition has varied over the years, but it often refers to a movement which replaces the minuet as the third movement in a four-movement work, such as a symphony, sonata, or...
  
  . Allegro vivace
• III. Poco andante
• IV. Finale. Allegro assai

External links

• Performance of String Quintet No. 2 by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
  The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
  The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is an American organization dedicated to the performance and promotion of chamber music. Its website states that it is "the nation’s premier repertory company for chamber music."...
  
   from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
  Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
  The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or Fenway Court, as the museum was known during Isabella Stewart Gardner's lifetime, is a museum in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, located within walking distance of the Museum of Fine Arts and near the Back Bay Fens...
  
   in MP3
  MP3
  MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
  
  format