Bedřich Smetana

File:Smetana.JPG

Portrait of Bedřich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana March 2, 1824 - 12 May 12, 1884) is considered one of the greatest Czech composers of the 19th century and the country's first nationalist composer. Smetana stands for "cream" in English. He is best known for his symphonic poem Vltava (The Moldau), the second in a cycle of six which he entitled Má vlast (My Country).part of the Austrian Empire

little formal training but thrived in a musical family, playing in a string quartet at five and on the piano in public at six and composing by eight. It was all instinctual and musical theory was still a closed book to him at 17.

Life and Studies

The Smetana monument in Litomyšl

By the grace of God and with His help I shall one day be a Liszt in technique and a Mozart in composition.

Early Years

Bedřich Smetana was born as the eleventh child and first surviving son of a fairly wealthy man from the third marriage of Master Brewer František Smetana to Barbora Linková. The family was constantly on the move, and young Bedřich went to high school in Jindřichův Hradec, Jihlava, Havlíčkův Brod, Prague, and Plzeň, where he graduated. Although he is the Czech Republic's national composer and wrote several operas in Czech, as a child he was not taught the language because speaking Czech signified a low status. He was taught German, and only in adulthood did he acquire his native tongue. His family addressed him in German — Fritz.

He was quite a child prodigy, playing the piano at his first concert at the age of eight. Music was encouraged within the family, and he gave repeated performances as a child in a quartet at home, playing the first violin and his father second. Still, the father was against Bedřich’s formal musical training.

Smetana did obey his mind’s calling and in 1843 started taking lessons at a piano school in Prague run by Joseph Proksch, whose teaching methods were considered the most advanced in Europe. Prague enjoyed bustling musical life; it had seen the first performances of Mozart’s Don Giovanni and La Clemenza di Tito. There were several musical schools and institutions in Prague: Prague Conservatory, founded in 1811, Society for the Perfection of Church Music in Bohemia, set up in 1826, and Organ School in 1830. Dvořák and Janáček would be on the graduate list of Organ School. Music was centered on church and theater. The theater catered to the nobility, and the center of theatrical and operatic life was the Estates Theater, where Don Giovanni was first performed and where Weber was director between 1813 and 1816. Liszt, Berlioz, Paganini, Mendelssohn, and Clara Schumann performed in the city.

Then Smetana made Prague his home and took up studies of piano and theory with J. B. Kittl, director of the Prague Conservatory. After he completed the studies, for four years he made his living as a music teacher for the family of the famous Count Thun. Then he founded his own private piano school in Prague, with the help of Franz Liszt, and began composing. Smetana was a great admirer of Liszt and the two composers met and corresponded with each other frequently. Smetana was drawn to Liszt's idea of the symphonic poem, which gave rise to Richard III, Waldstein's Camp, and Hakon Jarl. A year later married his adolescent sweetheart Kateřina Kolářová, who was an outstanding pianist.

Family Tragedies

Kateřina grappled with tuberculosis, and three of their four daughters died in infancy; only Sofie survived. The 1840s and 1850s were turbulent years for Bohemia and Europe, with European nationalist movements of 1848, political oppression, compounded by the death of his beloved second child, daughter Bedřiška, at the age of four. To make things worse, Smetana was unable to break through in his native country, and then his third child died nine months after Bedřiška. He started composing on a large scale. These were the circumstances that gave rise to his Piano Trio in G Minor, a piece soaked in sadness and despair, with phrases cut short, which might be taken as his reaction to the grief caused by the sudden loss of his daughter.

Sweden

Historic sources are ambiguous on whether he had to leave Prague because he was at odds with local authorities, who saw him a bit too much nationalistic or whether he just had to escape the place where everything reminded him of the loss of his daughter. In any case, he left Bohemia in 1856, with destination Gothenburg, Sweden. Thanks to his talents and possibly also his handsome, fine features, he was very popular with local women, who competed to become his students to the point that he had more students than he could manage. Here he taught, conducted Sweden's Philharmonic Society, and gave chamber music recitals for five years. He finally achieved recognition for his skills, that is, conducting, piano playing, and compositions. However, the northern climate aggravated Katerina’s condition and she died in 1859. A year later he married for the second time, to the 20-year-old Bettina Ferdinandiova. Then he started learning to speak Czech.

Back Home

Smetana's Tomb

Once the political storms in the Czech lands subsided, he hastened home, but he did not move back yet. He traveled back and forth to Gothenburg before moving back to Prague permanently in 1863, when he opened a new school of music dedicated to promoting Czech music. He composed historical opera The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, whose first performance in 1864 was an instant success, followed in 1866 by The Bartered Bride. In the same year he became a conductor at the Provisional Theater, the first theater in Prague to hold performances in Czech, where he focused on opera as a genre that allowed him to speak to his nation and reinforce his belief in its future. He worked there until he went deaf in 1874 as a result of syphilis.

Financial worries made him move to the village of Jabkenice in 1875. He was not accustomed to the remoteness of the countryside and did not enjoy that life style, yet he was very prolific, despite deafness and tinnitus, which caused him to hear a continuous, maddening high note which he described as the "shrill whistle of a first inversion chord of A-flat in the highest register of the piccolo. " “Deafness would be a relatively tolerable condition if only all was quiet in my head,” he remarked. This was the time when he wrote his masterpieces, operas, string quartets, piano and vocal compositions.

Last Days

On one April day in 1884 Smetana noted "Final page." on his score. He would not be able to compose any longer, nor was further home care an option. His physician suggested internment in a mental asylum in Prague, and that is what happened. Smetana died shortly after his sixtieth birthday.

The funeral procession began in Prague’s Old Town Square on May 15 and quickly turned into national mourning, with huge crowds lining the path of the procession to see off the national hero. At the National Theater, fanfares went off in respect to the composer for the last time, and his most cheerful work, The Bartered Bride, was performed; then the procession headed for the Vysehrad castle, where many of the famous citizens of Bohemia have been laid to rest.

Smetana's work was largely popular during his lifetime, except for his tragic opera Dalibor and a few other works. Although he was adored by the musical world during his lifetime, critics such as Jan Nepomuk Mayr and Frantisek Pivoda had wanted the Czech opera to follow the fashion of the mostly sung voice in opera, as was the fashion in Italy. Smetana fell in disfavor with those for not observing these tastes. Pivoda went as far as attempting to oust Smetana from the Provisional Theater. Those who adored Smetana saw in him a modernist and a Wagnerian composer.

Franz Liszt made a memorable compliment in a letter to the Czech nation: In haste I write to you, that Smetana's death has touched me deeply. He was truly a genius.

Musical Nationalism of the 19th Century

The period from approximately 1825 to 1900 is called Romanticism. In Europe, this was the era of political unrest and revolt of nations against the Austro-German influence, with a major event being the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna that redrew European boundaries and triggered protests. Politically, this reaction came to be known as nationalism, and its extent was such that it came to define the period of Romanticism, both in emotion and thought, and consequently music as well.

Nationalism comprises two stages: in the first half of the 19th century, nationalists regarded themselves as citizens of the world; later the reaction became more aggressive. “…it was to his nation—and not to a creed, a dynasty, or a class—that a citizen owed the first duty in a clash of loyalties.” This second stage is discernible in music in works composed after 1860 — music in each nation thus reflected the nature of the local conflict.

A distinctive feature of nationalism in music was an interest in innovation and exoticism. The composers strove for unique, distinguishable melody rather than imitation of the contemporary fare. That is why they incorporated folk songs and dances, which were monodic, and this in turn forced them to think up new harmonies. The passion for exoticism even encouraged borrowing another country's idioms and, consequently, a certain degree of the mixing of cultures. These trends were most apparent in Russia and Eastern Europe. Russia had its "The Five" (Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin); Central Europe Smetana, Dvorak, and Janacek; and Hungary was exemplified by Bartok. In Norway there was Grieg and in Finland Sibelius. Russian nationalists abandoned western European idioms to adopt cultural elements of the remote parts of the vast Tsarist Empire.

Still, to define nationalism in music is no easy task, because some works considered as its masterpieces did not contain a single folksong, as Steen observed in Smetana's The Bartered Bride. Nationalism is country specific by definition, and its musical language is imbued with national folk music and rhythms as well as the nation's culture, language, habits, scenery, and local color. As in the period of Classicism, which harmonized structural clarity with emotional restraint, in the Romantic period the composers also searched for the balance between emotional intensity and classical form. "Musical story-telling" became popular not only in opera but also in purely instrumental compositions; one of its most powerful forms was the symphonic poem that Smetana himself resorted to in order to paint a picture of his native land.

New instruments were utilized by orchestras, and composers strove to wrestle new sounds out of old instruments in an effort to broaden the scale of sounds and satisfy the audience's thirst for exotic scenes. In Russia, composers wrote music describing the Spanish countryside (Capriccio Espagnol by Rimsky-Korsakoff), and in Germany they tried to evoke the local color of Scotland (Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony). Operas also preferred exotic settings, such as Ancient Egypt in Verdi's Aida.

Romantic audiences greatly rewarded virtuoso performers. Women fainted when the Hungarian pianist and composer Liszt played the piano. On the other hand, the abundance of technically brilliant performers encouraged composition of pieces that were very demanding in terms of technical skills.

Nationalism in the Czech Lands

Bohemia was going through a period of the National Revival, which called for constitutional reforms and equal educational rights for Czech and German speakers. This was a reaction to the centralization policies of Emperor Franz Joseph I and the threat posed by German culture and German nationalism. Germany had ambitious plans of uniting all German-speaking peoples, including those living in Bohemia. There was a saying that a German will as soon do a good deed to a Slav 'as a snake will warm itself upon ice'.

The Czech language was therefore at the forefront of Czech nationalism and the survival of national identity. Science, literature and arts, especially in the first part of the century, searched for historical evidence to disprove the belief that Czechs were inferior to their Habsburg masters. Smetana's librettos were in Czech, which was an evidence that the language was fit for the needs of the nation. In the second half of the century, nationalism went into crescendo as the relaxed laws were passed, Prague civic authorities adopted the Czech language, and education in the native tongue was instituted. A temporary national theater—the Provisional Theater—seating around 800, opened in 1862 to reinforce the national identity. Smetana's first opera, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, was written for it. Czech Choral Society and the Artists' Club were founded at that time, with Smetana acting as conductor at the former and the first head of the music section at the latter. All of these steps gradually reversed the ratio of the German-speaking residents to the Czech-speaking ones to less than 14 percent in 1880s from more than 50 percent in late 1840s.

Czech nationalism was the most evident in opera, which had absorbed Italian influences, while symphonies and chamber music had borrowed from their German and Austrian counterparts. Smetana’s musical language was rooted in Liszt’s and Dvorak’s in Brahms'. Janacek was the purest Czech nationalist composer, having renounced the styles of Western Europe. To impart a distinctively Czech character, the composers drew inspiration from folksongs; however, those did not differ from Western European folksongs as much as the Russian ones did, since Bohemia had had an unimpeded contact with mainstream European music. And they chose national subjects for program music and operas. The melody was fresh and spontaneous.

Compositions

Smetana's first compositions included pieces for the piano, such as waltzes, bagatelles, and impromptus. But in 1863 he finished the opera Brandenburgers in Bohemia, with a libretto by Karel Sabina, which was a great success and brought its author the much-needed finances. Described as a Bohemian rebellion against Teutonic invaders, the music is strongly Wagnerian, with Bohemian folk songs and dances. The next three opearas—The Bartered Bride (he conducted it himself), Dalibor, and Libuse—defined the trend of Bohemia's musical theater.

The Bartered Bride

This is a comic opera in three acts set in a small Bohemian village a century earlier. All villagers are in a joyful, celebratory mood except John and Mary, who are facing opposition from Mary's parents, who want their daughter to marry Vasek, a rich but stuttering village idiot. This match was arranged by the marriage broker Kecal. Kecal's name stands for a person who talks too much and possibly lies. The plot goes on to take the audience to a happy ending of the story, when genuine love beats all the odds. Yet, Smetana viewed his greatest and most popular opera with condescension, because he wrote it to silence the critics who dismissed his first opera as too Wagnerian and too pretentious. It was frivolous and light and very much unlike his more serious and heroic pieces, which he felt were being neglected.

Pitts Sanborn commented that "While distinctively of its native soil... [this music] possesses the universal qualities necessary to give it a world-wide currency. We of other countries delight in Czech rhythms, its national dances, the characteristic contour of its melodies, but we also find in this music more than local color and exotic charm; the flowing humanity is there that transcends limits and boundaries." It offers insight into human character, its weaknesses and motivations, although it was written to entertain. We do not find such a penetrating portrait of human psychology and emotion in his serious operas.

My Fatherland

The six-part cycle of symphonic poems My Fatherland also incorporates Czech folk music. The first four poems are a tribute to Czech nature and history. Smetana liked to describe what his music was to convey: on Vltava (The Moldau in German), the river that originates in the forests of south Bohemia, flows across Prague and ends its winding journey through confluence with the Elbe River, he wrote: "...two springs pour forth their streams in the shade of the Bohemian forest, the one warm and gushing, the other cold and tranquil. Their waves gaily flowing over their stony beds, join and glitter in the sun. The woodland brook, chattering along, becomes the river Moldau which, as its waters hurry through the valleys of Bohemia, becomes a mighty stream. ... the wide river bed in which it rolls on, in majestic calm, toward Prague, where, welcomed by time-honored Vysehrad, it disappears from the poet's gaze far on the horizon."

1. Vysehrad is an ancient seat of Bohemia's rulers.
2. Vltava is a favorite with audiences worldwide.
3. Sarka is inspired by the old legend of Ctirad, who was murdered by his treacherous and men-hating lover, Sarka.
4. Tabor pays homage to the Hussite period.
5. Blanik is based on the same theme as Tabor.
6. From the Fields and Groves of Bohemia was described by the composer as "Bohemia's blessed fields, whose lovely scent of flowers and cool breezes fill us with inspiration".

From My Life

The string quartet in E minor From My Life is an autobiographical work. The program supplied by the composer describes the first part as love of art in his youth, romantic supremacy, yearning for something which he could not define, and warning of future misfortune. The second part conjures up the atmosphere of his joyful youth when he composed dance music enough to bury the world and was known as a passionate lover of dancing. The third part is a testimony to the bliss of his first love to the girl who became his faithful wife. The fourth part speaks of his discovery that he coud treat the national elements in music and the joy in following this path until deafness set in. The final movement is punctuated by a piercing high E in the first violin which, Smetana explained, represents the devastating effects of his tinnitus.

Works

Operas

• Braniboři v Čechách (Brandenburgers in Bohemia) – 1863
• Prodaná nevěsta (The Bartered Bride) – 1866
• Dalibor – 1867
• Libuše – 1872
• Dvě vdovy (The Two Widows) – 1873
• Hubička (The Kiss) – 1876
• Tajemství (The Secret)
• Čertova stěna (The Devil's Wall)
• Viola (not completed) – 1884

Other

Cycle of symphonic poems Ma vlast (My Fatherland) 1874&ndash1879:

Vysehrad

Vltava

Sarka

Z ceskych luhu a haju (From Czech Fields and Groves)

Tabor

Blanik

• String quartet From my Life – 1876
• Quartet Bohemian Dances
• Tone poem Wallensteins Lager – 1859

External Links

• "The Composers of Bohemia" AOL Members Website, accessed January 22, 2007
• Free Public Domain Sheet Music by Smetana at IMSLP, accessed January 22, 2007
• "History of Music: The Romantic Era" Czech Radio, accessed January 22, 2007
• Carey, Nick, January 26, 2000 "Bedrich Smetana" Czech Radio, accessed January 22, 2007
• "Bedrich Smetana" Czech Radio Archives, accessed January 22, 2007
• Miles, John, 1985 "Nationalism and its Effect on Music in the Romantic Era" John Miles' Personal Website, accessed January 22, 2007

References & Further Reading

• Ewen, David (Edited by). The Complete Book of Classical Music. London: Hale, 1966. ISBN 0-709-03865-8.
• Gammond, Peter. Classical Music: An Essential Guide to the World's Finest Music. New York: Harmony Books, 1988. ISBN 0-517-57094-7.
• Grout, Donald J and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music, 4th ed. New York and London: Norton, 1988. ISBN
• Ramba, Jiří. Slavné české lebky, antropologicko-lékařské nálezy jako pomocníci historie (Famous Czech Skulls, anthropological-medical findings as helpers of history), Prague: Galén, 2005. ISBN 80-7262-325-7.
• Stanley, John (1994). Classical Music: an introduction to classical music through the great composers and their masterworks, 1st ed, Reader's Digest, 1994. ISBN 0-895-77606-5.
• Steen, Michael. The Lives and Times of the Great Composers. Cambridge: Icon Books, 2003. ISBN 1-840-46485-2.

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