Czech, Please

I think it was the late great Alan Rich who wrote something about the unique harmonic flavor of Czech music—the closest I can find in his archives is this reference, in a piece about the tragically short-lived Erwin Schulhoff, to "that peculiarly Slavic harmonic eagerness that won't let you escape even if you want to." I don't remember his praise being quite so double-edged, nor his broadening this observation to peoples beyond Bohemia and/or Moravia. Either way I know exactly what he's talking about and will only add: There is indeed something special about the harmonic sound of Czech composers, particularly of the 20th century. I've written before about my love for Czech composers' string writing in particular, above them all Janáček, and I don't think this convergence is a coincidence. Pieces written exclusively for strings have often served as laboratories, test kitchens, proving grounds where composers explored the inner and outer limits of their musical language, from Beethoven to Herrmann, Ravel to Crumb.

So it is that I cherish not only those seminal Janáček quartets but also Dvořák's famous "American" quartet, especially the tuneful sweep of its third movement. You can hear many Czech signatures here: a brightly singing quality even over minor-key undercurrents, a dancing spirit with a spiny poise—vigor but also rigor:

Another warhorse, Smetana's "From My Life" quartet, is almost as dear to me in its entirety as Janáček's two quartets, and if I had to pick a favorite moment it's the stretchy dissonance the second movement, the Allegro moderato a la Polka, shoehorns into an otherwise rolling dance tune—a little fly in the ointment that gives it an extra buzz for me. You can see it here (see the C# poking out of an otherwise consonant F major chord):

And you can hear it crop up around 1:03 below, throwing tiny, delicious speed bumps into the tempo around 1:13:

Likewise the great violinist Josef Suk, whose namesake quartet I was fortunate enough to hear when I visited Prague a quarter century ago. This intermezzo from his first string quartet is similarly idiomatic, purportedly "alla marcia" but more tango-like in its feel and folklike in its melodic contours, and no less insistently vinegary in its harmonic flavors, its anxious flurries whipped up into a sweet, stiff froth like a meringue:

Fine and well, but what if you added two extra strings to that? That was the proposition offered to me by a cherished collection of string sextets by Martinů and Schulhoff. Adding a viola and a cello to the traditional quartet (two violins, one viola, one cello), this beefing up of the middle and bottom voices has the unmistakeable effect of added gravity, a new sonic equilibrium that can sound alternately grounded and a little seasick. Schulhoff's sextet is more straight-up 20th-century dissonant than most of his compatriots' work, but it shares their sense of restless spirit amid an overhanging gloom, of crying that is also singing (and vice versa). He called his third moment "Burlesca," but this is not so much a dance as a chase:

The more tuneful Martinů sextet on that collection is eminently worth your time, but the record's real find may be three of his "madrigals"—an odd name for a series of violin-and-viola duets, but it was his way of nodding to a favorite medieval influence. They do have a prim, angular neo-baroque feel to them, which somehow rhymes with that clear, astringent Czech harmonic language. It's remarkable how rich and thick a sound two instruments can make; literally the minimum requirement to make harmony, it here provides maximal joy.