Meditation for String Quartet Josef Suk

Josef Suk (January 4, 1874 - May 29, 1935) was a Czech composer and violinist who achieved great fame as a leader in the musical art of composing extended harmonies. In creating extended harmonies with more complex tonal movements leading towards atonal sounds, Suk balanced the concepts of freedom and responsibility, a freedom from traditional tonal structures with a responsibility in the use of chromatic polyphony and dissonance. His choices of the type of harmonies that he used could color and predispose a listener and musician in their thoughts on atonal music. Such choices become the foundation of a musical maturity and personal responsibility. Josef Suk lived at a time of great impressionism and symbolism in music, painting, and poetry. His works became a bridge between a harmonious order in the nationalism of nineteenth-century music and the atonality of the twentieth century. Suk tried to express the emotions of an age of musical diversity during this period preceding World War I, and his experimentation with music without a key helped to support composers such as Arnold Schoenberg's point of departure from a harmonious order to a musical emancipation.