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Bedrich Smetana
1824 – 1884
Bedrich Smetana created a new musical identity for the Czechs, inspired by popular legends, history and countryside. Now Smetana is recognised as the vital force in establishing Bohemian music around the globe - and not even his successor Dvorak made his homeland such an indelible part of his musical style.
Life and Music
- Due to his father's resistance, Smetana's hopes of a musical career seemed remote until he secured a job teaching piano to the German family of Count Leopold Thun, which paid for his own tuition with the renowned Josef Proksch.
- Smetana launched himself 'on tour' as a concert pianist in the summer of 1847, but the turnout at the first venue was so low that he cancelled the tour.
- Short of money, he set up a piano school in Prague in 1848 and scraped together a living. Liszt, who had become a close friend, helped to secure publishing of some of the younger composer's piano pieces.
- The spirit of independence during the 1840s spread revolution fever across Europe, and Prague was no exception. Smetana helped defend the barricades in the unsuccessful 1848 Prague Revolution. His early attempts at serious composition were received indifferently while his playing career failed to materialise.
- Smetana married his childhood sweetheart Katerina Kolárová, who bore him four daughters, three of whom died tragically between 1854 and 1856. His favourite, Bedriska, had shown great musical promise and the anguish caused by her death from scarlet fever was poured out in Smetana's 1855 Piano Trio.
- Smetana moved to Sweden in 1856 to search for a teaching post. Appointed director of the Göteborg Philharmonic, he was embraced by the Swedes as both a pianist and conductor, and he may have moved there permanently if it hadn't been for the severely conservative musical climate.
- Smetana produced three symphonic poems (including Wallensteins Camp, based on the drama by the German dramatist Schiller). These were the first orchestral works to hint at Smetana's future mastery of the medium.
- Katerina died in 1859. The following year, Smetana married his brother's sister-in-law Bettina Ferdinandová. Then, as a result of Austria granting political autonomy to Bohemia, he returned to Prague in 1861.
- Smetana scored a hit with The Brandenburgers in Bohemia (1863), for which he won the coveted Harrach Prize for the best opera on a Czech theme. Smetana finally established himself with his second opera The Bartered Bride (1866), and became director of the Prague Provisional Theatre.
- His next opera Dalibor, composed for the foundation stone ceremony at the permanent Prague National Theatre on 16 May 1868, was a moderate success until the press criticised it for 'Wagnerism'.
- It was Má vlast ('My Fatherland') - a set of six nationalistic symphonic poems (composed 1872-79) - that re-established his popularity. Second in the cycle, Vltava ('Moldau'), which follows the progress of Bohemia's most celebrated river, became his most popular work.
- Meanwhile, a syphilitic infection was starting to affect Smetana's hearing. During 1874 he became totally deaf in one ear and was forced to resign from his post at the theatre.
- In his final years, the frustrations that dogged Smetana's career turned to tragedy, culminating in the ramshackle premiere of his eighth and final opera The Devil's Wall (1882) - despite it containing some of the best music he wrote. Smetana's worsening condition undermined his sanity and he spent the last three weeks of his life in an asylum.
- Undervalued in his own lifetime, Smetana was buried a national hero.
Did you know?
One of the most notable times Má vlast was used was as a political expression of nationalist solidarity during the 1944 Prague Spring Festival to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the composer's birth. Despite the Nazis' best attempts to prevent nationalistic outbursts, his music was used in a musico-political protest against the occupation.
