Dumka (plural “dumky”) was a name given to a particular kind of Ukrainian folk song—one of a narrative character sung to the accompaniment of certain folk instruments. Dvořák used the term several times in his music: in a piano piece published as Opus 35 in 1876, in the slow movement of the String Sextet, Opus 48, in the Opus 51 String Quartet (1878–79), as the title of a piano piece of 1884 published as Opus 12, in the slow movement of the famous A major Piano Quintet, Opus 81, and, finally, as a title for the present Trio, composed between November 1890 and February 1891.

Dvořák himself seems not to have had a specific idea as to what dumka implied—at least not an idea he could put into words. One of the first people to play Opus 90 was the great Irish-American cellist Victor Herbert (soon to become much more famous as the brightest light among composers for the American musical theater). Herbert was head of the cello faculty of the National Conservatory in New York, and Dvořák was the director. Shortly after Dvořák’s arrival in this country, Herbert joined the composer and a violinist in reading through the recently completed and still unpublished Trio. Herbert recalled later that when he turned to Dvořák to express his enthusiasm for the new piece, he also asked him what the title meant. The composer replied, “Why, what does it mean? It means nothing!”

Actually Dvořák seems to have associated the term with the verb dumati (“meditate” or “recollect”). The works to which he gives the title “Dumka” share a tendency to alternate passages of introspection and yearning with others of the greatest exuberance—which corresponded to the composer’s own mercurial temperament when he allowed his thoughts to wander freely.

The Trio is one of Dvořák’s most original and characteristic works. Rather than following the traditional chamber music forms of three or four movements beginning with one in sonata form, he cast the “Dumky” Trio in six movements, each in a different key, and each presenting the characteristic alternation of moods of his conception of the dumka. (The fact that each of the movements is itself a dumka explains the use of the plural form as a title for the entire work.)

Although there is a risk in using a constant pattern of slow alternating with fast sections throughout all six movements of the same piece, the richness of Dvořák’s invention throughout prevents boredom. The first three movements are linked by the composer’s direction to proceed directly on, so that the entire composition seems to flow from one section to the next without let or hindrance. Only after the fourth movement does the composer call for a substantial pause. The range of moods encompassed by the score is striking, and the three participants all have brilliantly conceived parts to play. It is scarcely surprising that the Trio remains one of the most frequently heard of Dvořák’s chamber works, since it so thoroughly embodies the composer at his very best. —© S. L.