In his youth, Dvorák wrote a set of 18 songs based on the poems of the Moravian writer Gustav Pfleger-Moravský, and called them Cypresses. He dedicated them to the composer Karel Bendl, though they were, in fact, addressed to the young actress Josefina Cermáková, who later became his wife. In later life, he rearranged 12 of them for string quartet, and it is usually in this form they are now played. The music is gently romantic, rarely sentimental, and full of Dvorák's gift for fluid melody. To hear all 12 in succession is, perhaps, rather like eating a whole box of chocolates at one go; but Cypresses is a good example of the lyricism found in Dvorák's more fully developed chamber works. The pervasive gentle melancholy of these pieces is lightened by dance rhythms. In any performance of Cypresses it is useful to know the title of the song on which the movement is based, so as to have a clue to its mood and inspiration, for these are truly "emotions recollected in tranquillity."

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