David Beccue News Today

Dvorak thought he was quoting the scarlet tanager in his famous American string quartet. What he heard and quoted was actually a different bird entirely - the red-eyed vireo.

Photo: Mark McKone, Carleton’s Towsley Professor of Biology, reached a professional milestone in October 2020: his first article published in a music journal. The paper, titled “The Iowa Bird That Inspired Antonín Dvořák’s American String Quartet in 1893: Controversy over the Species’ Identity and Why It Matters,” digs deep into both music history and ecology. It argues that the birdsong inspiration for the third movement of Dvořák’s “American” String Quartet in F major wa...