Dvorak's String Quartet No.12 in F has a more familiar name, American. While in America, Dvorak spent much time in Bohemian settlements, and it is their folk idioms, rather than American, that give this quartet its attractive melodies.

Antonin Dvorak's profuse outpouring of quartets (14 between 1862 and 1895) began with diffuse, overlong works - the first six average three-quarters of an hour each - but, while these expansionist tendencies continued, later works gained in substance and, of course, the folk element is strong. This is Dvorak's role in quartet history: to confirm the genre's continuing viability and to reintroduce (as Brahms had failed to do) the eastern European elements that Haydn had so entertainingly drawn on a century earlier.