The Sonatina in G major for violin and piano, Op.

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...

 100, B.

Jarmil Burghauser

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

 183, was written by Antonín Dvořák

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...

 between November 19 and December 3, 1893

1893 in music

-Events:* February 9 - Premiere of Giuseppe Verdi's final opera Falstaff in La Scala in Milan*August 14-15 - America's oldest music organization, the Stoughton Musical Society performs at the World's Columbian Exposition...

, in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. It was the last chamber

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 composition he wrote during his sojourn in America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Dvořák catered the sonatina

Sonatina

A sonatina is literally a small sonata. As a musical term, sonatina has no single strict definition; it is rather a title applied by the composer to a piece that is in basic sonata form, but is shorter, lighter in character, or more elementary technically than a typical sonata...

 to the gradually developing musical abilities of his children, especially those of his 15 year-old daughter Ottilie and 10 year-old son Toník. In a letter to Fritz 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...

 on January 2, 1894, Dvořák conceived the piece in the following terms: "It is intended for youths (dedicated to my two children), but even grown-ups, adults, should be able to converse with it..."
The sonatina was published 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...

 in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 in 1894.

Structure

1. Allegro risoluto; Time signature
   Time signature
   The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....
   
   : 3/4; Key
   Key (music)
   In music theory, the term key is used in many different and sometimes contradictory ways. A common use is to speak of music as being "in" a specific key, such as in the key of C major or in the key of F-sharp. Sometimes the terms "major" or "minor" are appended, as in the key of A minor or in the...
   
   : 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...
   
   
2. Larghetto; Time signature: 2/4; Key: G minor
   G minor
   G minor is a minor scale based on G, consisting of the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. For the harmonic minor scale, the F is raised to F. Its relative major is B-flat major, and its parallel major is G major....
   
   
3. Molto vivace; Time signature: 3/4; Key: G major
4. Allegro; Time signature: 2/4; Key: G major

The four short 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...

 of the sonatina each exhibit a simple and clear, formal structure (hence the diminutive, cf. sonata

Sonata

Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...

). They all contain themes, which, like those already found in his other American chamber works (the String Quartet in F

String Quartet No. 12 (Dvorák)

The American string quartet, opus 96 in F major, is the 12th string quartet composed by Antonín Dvořák. It was written in 1893, during Dvořák's visit to the United States. Dvořák wrote that the quartet - one of the most popular in the chamber music repertoire - is influenced by American folk music...

 and the String Quintet in E-flat

String Quintet No. 3 (Dvorák)

The String Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 97, B. 180, was composed by Antonín Dvořák during the summer he spent in Spillville, Iowa in 1893. It is a "Viola Quintet" in that it is scored for string quartet with an extra viola. It was completed in just over a month, immediately after he wrote his...

), owe their inspiration to Indian melodies

Native American music

American Indian music is the music that is used, created or performed by Native North Americans, specifically traditional tribal music. In addition to the traditional music of the Native American groups, there now exist pan-tribal and inter-tribal genres as well as distinct Indian subgenres of...

 and Negro spirituals

Spiritual (music)

Spirituals are religious songs which were created by enslaved African people in America.-Terminology and origin:...

, which are characterized by pentatonic scale

Pentatonic scale

A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave in contrast to a heptatonic scale such as the major scale and minor scale...

s and syncopated

Syncopation

In music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be...

 rhythm

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

, among other traits. The mood of the composition is fresh and joyful. Only the second movement and part of the last movement are nostalgic; they are inspired by the composer's longing for his home country.

The slow movement Larghetto was hurriedly noted down on Dvořák's shirt sleeve while on a visit to Minnehaha Falls

Minnehaha Falls

Minnehaha Creek is a tributary of the Mississippi River located in Hennepin County, Minnesota that extends from Lake Minnetonka in the west and flows east for 22 miles through several suburbs west of Minneapolis and then through south Minneapolis. Including Lake Minnetonka, the watershed for the...

, near Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...

. Simrock sold this movement separately, without the composer's permission, and Fritz Kreisler

Fritz Kreisler

Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...

 often performed it as Indian Lullaby. It also appeared as Indian Canzonetta; such romantic titles were not the composer's, but were added subsequently by publishers.

External links

• Performance of Sonatina in an arrangement for viola and piano by Dimitri Murrath (viola) and Vincent Planes(piano) 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