There’s a long list of composers ranging from Vivaldi to Messiaen who have incorporated bird song into their musical works.  Today we make note of one of them.

On this date in 1893 the great Czech composer Antonin Dvořák was vacationing with his family in Spillville, Iowa, spending the hot summer months with a small Czech community who had settled along the banks of the Turkey River. 

Dvořák liked to walk along the river listening to the birds, who, he said, helped him come up with musical ideas — ideas he would scribble in pencil on his stiff white shirt cuffs.  Dvořák’s son, Otakar, eight years old at the time, reports that on June 12, 1893, a fishing trip along the Turkey River was cut short, much to his annoyance.  When Otakar asked why, Dvořák said simply: “My cuff is already full of notes — I’ve got to get home and copy them down.”

In less than a week Dvořák finished what would become one of his best-known and best-loved works — a string quartet in F Major nick-named the “American” Quartet.  The quartet’s Scherzo movement even includes a musical quotation from a particularly persistent American bird whose song Dvořák found a bit distracting.

Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904) — String Quartet, Op. 96 (American) (Vlach Quartet) Naxos 8.553371