Bedřich Smetana

The compositions of Bedřich Smetana are often described as foundational for a distinctively Czech musical tradition. Like Mikhail Glinka (1804–57) in Russia, Stanisław Moniuszko (1819–72) in Poland, and Sándor Erkel (1846–1900) in Hungary, Smetana composed several operas that have been considered emblematic of nationhood: notably Prodaná nevěsta (The Bartered Bride), which portrays and celebrates bucolic village customs in Bohemia, and Libuše, which addresses the mytho-historical origins of Prague and the Přemyslid dynasty. Smetana followed his principal mentor, Franz Liszt (1811–86), in favoring symphonic poems over symphonies. His cycle of six symphonic poems, Má vlast (My Fatherland), depicts the sights and legends of Bohemia, and helped to strengthen his credentials as the “father” of Czech national music.

Early Years in his Homeland (1824–1856)

Smetana was born in 1824 in Litomyšl, in what is now the Czech Republic, but was then part of the Habsburg Empire. (German was his first language.) Some of his schooling took place in Prague, and he returned there in 1843 with the aim of making his way as a musician. He studied composition with an eminent local musician, Josef Proksch, who introduced him at various times to Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann. Starting in 1844, he taught music to the family of Count Leopold Thun and subsequently opened his own Piano Institute in Prague. Yet he failed to achieve the wider recognition he sought in the city, where he was known primarily as a local teacher and performer—and as a composer of salon pieces, which included a series of polkas he later described as “in the manner of Chopin’s mazurkas.” Belatedly, he achieved some success when he conducted his Triumf-Sinfonie (1853–54) in 1855. But by then he had already decided to seek his fortunes elsewhere.

Smetana: Trio in G minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 15

Middle Period: Wider Recognition in Göteborg and Prague (1856–1874)

In 1856, thanks to an initiative of the pianist Alexander Dreyschock, Smetana moved to Göteborg, Sweden, where he played a central role in the musical life of the city. However, he maintained his links to Prague, and it was in the course of his travels between the two cities that he made several stopovers with Liszt in Weimar. These visits impelled Smetana to commit to Liszt’s ambitious prospectus for a higher fusion of music and the poetic, and on his return to Göteborg he accordingly composed two symphonic poems, Richard III (1857–58) and Valdštýnův tábor (Wallenstein’s Camp) (1858–59). However, he increasingly directed this Lisztian agenda, with its modernist rhetoric of Zukunftsmusik—a “music of the future”—toward his own separate agenda for Czech music. In later life, he declared that in response to a provocation, he “swore there [Weimar] and then [1857] that no other than I should beget a native Czech music.”

These ambitions crystallized when he returned to Prague in 1861.The move was motivated partly by political change in Prague (the end of the conservative Alexander Bach era and an ongoing “National Revival”), and partly by ambitious plans for a new Provisional Theatre in the city—a national stage to be controlled by the Czechs, not the Austrians. His opera Braniboři v Čechách (The Brandenburgers in Bohemia), composed between 1862 and 1863, was a notable success at its premiere in 1866, and bred further successes, including Prodaná nevěsta (The Bartered Bride, 1863–66) and Libuše (1869–72). By directing their subject matter, respectively, to national history, to an idealized “folk,” and to Bohemian mythology, these operas adopted three signifiers of the cultural nation that were becoming increasingly familiar in 19th-century national operas. Less successful at the time was Dalibor (1865–67), which was considered too in the style of the German opera composer Richard Wagner, though in later performances it came to be appreciated.

Final Years (1874–1884)

During his final decade, Smetana wrote three more operas, as well as the Má Vlast cycle (1872–79), which was met with universal acclaim upon its first complete performance, in 1882. (The second of these symphonic poems, Vltava, is perhaps his most famous composition.) He also wrote his most celebrated chamber work, the String Quartet No. 1 (“From My Life”), in 1876. By this time, he was recognized by many—at home and abroad—as the key figure in Czech (as distinct from Bohemian) national music. However, a rapid deterioration in his health, including a total loss of hearing, began to take its toll. It seems to have been the result of syphilis, which was probably also the cause of his worsening mental state. He was unable to attend a banquet held in honor of his 60th birthday, in 1884, and he died on May 12th at a psychiatric institution in Prague.

Smetana: Trio in G minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 15

Legacy

If anything, the recognition afforded Smetana during his final decade became more sustained and widespread after his death. He was promoted—especially by the influential arts society Umělecká Beseda (UB)—as the single most important progenitor of Czech national music, and he left a significant mark on younger composers such as Vitěslav Novák (1870–1949), Josef Suk (1874–1935), and even Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), in his early works. However, admiration for his music was given an unhappy twist in the postwar years, since the communist authorities of Czechoslovakia insisted on promoting Smetana, at the expense of Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904), in a highly polemicized reading of what had been a longstanding—and no doubt inevitable—comparison between two highly valued figures. Since the 1989 fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, there has been a studied attempt to find some balance in these matters.

Watching and Listening

Two Smetana works in the Digital Archive are linked by one of the central tropes of the Romantic era: the musical work as a fragment of autobiography. Smetana acknowledged that his Piano Trio in G minor, composed between 1854 and 1855, was a direct response to the recent death of his eldest daughter from scarlet fever. Hence, no doubt, the dark hues and impassioned tone of the opening movement, with its consolatory second theme; hence the first of the two trios (as in the scherzo-and-trio form, and in this work labeled “Alternativo”) of the second, quasi-scherzo movement, which retains a traditional repetition structure, but is assigned a lyrical, pensive character not entirely characteristic of trios. Most remarkable of all is the rondo finale—not just for its deeply expressive second theme, but also for the funeral march (“Grave, quasi marcia”) that appears towards the end.

While the Piano Trio had a decidedly mixed reception (it was at least admired by Liszt), the String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, composed in 1876, was a success from the start, and remains one of Smetana’s most admired works. The composer subtitled the work “From My Life,” and proceeded to spell out the program: the first movement portrays the idealism of his youth as an artist (albeit tinged with foreboding) through a fervent opening theme on viola that returns at the very end of the work. The polka of its second movement evokes his love of Bohemian folklore—specifically folk dancing—and contains a highly original episode, in which the two violins accompany the dance in offbeat, four-part chords. The melody of the slow third movement was composed as a tribute to Smetana’s first wife, who died in 1859. The course of the finale is famously interrupted by a piercing high harmonic on the first violin, intended to represent the composer’s oncoming deafness. This is followed by a backward glance at themes from earlier in the work and an ending that fades wistfully into silence.

More Videos