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The G minor String Quartet is the last of six quartets known collectively as the Apponyi Quartets, named for Count Apponyi, a relative of the Esterhazys, Haydn's patron. In 1791, Haydn's first concert tour of London made him an international superstar and changed his approach to composing. He had written chamber music for intimate settings, but after he heard it performed publicly in London he changed his concept of the genre. In Chamber Music, Berger describes the change: the quartets open with introductions designed to get the attention of larger, less sophisticated public audiences; the part writing is more brilliant, and the melodies are catchier and easier to recall. Tempos are exaggerated (faster fast movements, slower slow movements); once intimate details are replaced by grand gestures, and the emotional content of the music becomes more intense. Haydn composed the Apponyi Quartets in 1793 for his second London tour.

In the sonata form Allegro a brusque introduction, dainty first theme, and dancing second theme are developed; a truncated recapitulation closes the movement. The introspective second movement, the emotional high point of the work, is followed by a minuet in which Haydn demonstrates his contrapuntal skills in the treatment of a song-like melody; the trio offers a somber contrast. The galloping rhythms of the finale give the quartet its nickname, and its exuberant energy carries the listener/rider quickly and joyfully out of Haydn's musical landscape.

Stacy Garrop is a rising star in the ranks of American composers. Originally from the Bay Area of San Francisco, she has been playing the piano since age five; it is the instrument on which she does all her composing. In 2004-2005 she was the composer-in-residence of Chicago's Music in the Loft chamber music series; Music in the Loft commissioned the first movement of "Demons and Angels" for performance by the Biava Quartet in their 2004/2005 concert series. They subsequently commissioned the rest of the quartet, which the Biava Quartet premiered at Yale University in November 2005 and in Chicago in the fall of 2006.

Garrop is currently an Assistant Professor in Composition at The Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. The Roosevelt Torch reports that she composed "Demons and Angels" after hearing the terrible news that her ex-boyfriend had killed five people. Garrop describes the quartet: "Disguised demons, forgiving angels, tortured human souls. 'String Quartet No. 2' is a programmatic piece that tells the story of a man who thought his actions were guided by the forces of good, only to discover that he has lost his mind and wreaked havoc on earth. The four movements alternate between evil and good . . . . The piece concludes as the man faces a life of confinement in which his fleeting thoughts alternate between chaos and the hope of finding redemption by the grace of an angel."

"Demonic Spirits" opens the quartet; its strident chords and chaotic music signal the dark drama to follow. A contrasting soft, lighter theme leads into a gently rocking melody that soon slides away on a glissando. The alternation of these two musical moods defines the structure of the movement, which ends as the music marches from the lowest to the highest registers in harsh chords that suddenly, almost whimsically, are whisked away into nothingness.

"Song of the Angels" begins with an echo of the first movement's rocking motif, over which a plaintive solo melody emerges then ends abruptly. After a momentary silence the musical texture thickens; the cello steps into the music with a sinister march that recurs as a unifying element in the quartet. As the movement ends, everything settles into silence.

"Inner Demons" opens with a more complex harmonic statement of the rocking theme before the sinister march reappears in the cello. Tense music dances demonically and then fades into silence. A surprise awaits. From the silence emerges the plaintive spiritual "I Am a Poor Wayfarin' Stranger" set in hymn-like harmony, its serenity marred only by the cello's menacing accompaniment. The spiritual's melody then appears serenely unadorned, but when the first violin suddenly begins to spin outward to its highest register, the harmony disintegrates. Silence again. Long ascending glissandos herald the return of dissonance as fragments of earlier melodies writhe and weave themselves together, climaxing into a demonic frenzy. Several times the mournful spiritual attempts to sing through the chaos but fails. Familiar melodic fragments appear and disappear until the buzzing strings ascend, and the movement ends.

"Broken Spirit" is fragmented throughout. Melodies appear and disappear without development. Nothing holds. A sinister musical plunge ends in silence, and every new beginning leads nowhere. This is a vision of hell. Suddenly the cello marches through the chaos, and a simple violin melody seems to herald a moment of peace, but that, too, disappears into darkness. Another quiet hymn seems to promise hope. Could the dawn of redemption be near in this tormented landscape? No. The cello's sinister march quashes the serenity, and chaos returns. Light seems to break through the darkness again as the first violin soars upward, but trills that promise a quiet ending dissolve as the haunting march reenters. More trills lead to a single plucked string that precedes the final silence and the loss of the soul.

When Dvorak arrived in America in September 1892 to assume a three-year residency as the Director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, he was already a mature composer with a distinct style influenced by both classical and romantic composers. Since his arrival coincided with the 400th anniversary of Columbu'?s voyage to the New World, he heard numerous musical bands that exposed him to American popular music; later encounters with Negro spirituals and the music of Native Americans stimulated his imagination. The subsequent development of his "American" style was no doubt most influenced by his 1893 visit to the small Bohemian town of Spillville, Iowa, where he composed the String Quartet in F Major in just fifteen days, from June 8-23, one hundred years after Haydn composed "The Rider" Quartet.

In his study of Dvorak's chamber music, Otakar Sourek describes the first movement as "the smiling contentment of a bucolic existence" in its rustling tremolos, pizzicato touches, and airy principal theme. In New York, Dvorak had been homesick, and the stay in Spillville buoyed his spirits. The first movement reflects his joy; its jaunty first and second themes are based on the pentatonic scale, a common feature of folk songs around the world. An elaborate development of the first theme and a fugato based on the second theme lead to a restatement of both themes, bringing the movement to an exultant conclusion.

In the Lento arietta musical ideas are stated in couplets (AA BB CC), followed by a variation on the A theme in the cello. The opening melody in the first violin seems to imitate the vocal style of the Plains Indians. The drone-like syncopations in the inner voices and the percussive cello pizzicato provide a primitive accompaniment not unlike the drums and rattles used by Plains Indians to complement their melodies. Although his aide notated the melodies of a party of Kickapoo and Sioux that visited Spillville, Dvorak claimed never to have quoted American melodies directly.

At just four minutes, the Scherzo with its two trios is the shortest movement. The second trio is famous for its musical idea, played in the high register of the violins and associated with the song of the scarlet tanager, a bird indigenous to the Iowa plains. Dvorak often heard the bird in his walks about Spillville and notated its song. The scarlet tanager sings five melodies, and Dvorak uses four of them in this scherzo.

The Finale of the American quartet is a sonata-rondo animated by a pervasive rhythmic pattern that may be an adaptation of Native American drumming, or, more simply, a happy skipping. Critics have associated the chorale-like central episode with an image of Dvorak improvising for mass on the little organ at the St. Wenceslaus Church in Spillville, which he and his wife attended. The movement's opening melodies return in shortened form to end the quartet happily.