Humoresques (Czech: Humoresky), Op. 101 (B. 187), is a piano cycle by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, written during the summer of 1894. Music critic David Hurwitz says "the seventh Humoresque is probably the most famous small piano work ever written after Beethoven's Für Elise."

During his stay in United States, when Dvořák was director of the Conservatory in New York from 1892 to 1895, the composer collected many interesting musical themes in his sketchbooks. He used some of these ideas in other compositions, notably the "New World" Symphony, the "American" String Quartet, the Quintet in E♭ major, and the Sonatina for Violin, but some remained unused.

In 1894, Dvořák spent the summer with his family in Vysoká u Příbrami in Bohemia. During this "vacation", Dvořák began to use the collected material and to compose a new cycle of short piano pieces. On 19 July 1894, Dvořák sketched the first Humoresque in B major, today number 6 in the cycle. However, the composer soon started to create scores for the pieces that were intended to be published. The score was completed on 27 August 1894.

The cycle was entitled Humoresques shortly before Dvořák sent the score to his German publisher F. Simrock. The composition was published by Simrock in the autumn of 1894.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humoresques_(Dvořák)