String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96, “American”

• Dvořák wrote this string quartet while he was living in America and teaching at the National Conservatory. He completed the work in Spillville, Iowa, the Czech community where he lived between terms.¹
• Dvořák wrote this piece in a short period of time: he started work on June 8, and finished it on June 23.²
• This work premiered in Boston on January 1, 1894.³

“I wanted for once to write something very melodious and simple, and I always kept Papa Haydn before my eyes; for that reason it turned out so simple.”

Dvořák, writing to his friend J.B. Foerster in 1895 about the String Quartet Op. 96.⁴

1. Otakar Šourek, Antonín Dvořák: Letters and Reminiscences, trans. Roberta Finlayson Samsour (Prague: Artia, 1954), 161-162.
2. Ibid.
3. “String Quartet No. 12, Op. 96 (Dvořák , Antonín),” IMSLP, accessed February 24, 2021, https://imslp.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No.12%2C_Op.96_(Dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k%2C_Anton%C3%ADn).
4. Michael B. Beckerman, New Worlds of Dvořák: Searching in America for the Composer’s Inner Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), 150.