Bedřich Smetana
Bedřich Smetana was born in Leitomischl, Bohemia, on March 2, 1824. Though he was interested in music from childhood on, he received little training until his nineteenth year when he came to Prague and studied with Josef Proksch. For several years after the completion of his music study he worked as teacher of music for Count Leopold Thun. He soon became active in the musical life of his country; in 1848 he was a significant force in the creation of Prague’s first music school. In 1849, Smetana was appointed pianist to Ferdinand I, the former Emperor of Austria residing in Prague. From 1856 to 1861 Smetana lived in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he was active as conductor, teacher, and pianist. After returning to his native land in 1861 he became one of its dominant musical figures. He served as director of the music school, conducted a chorus, wrote music criticisms, founded and directed a drama school, and organized the Society of Artists. He also wrote a succession of major works in which the cause of Bohemian nationalism was espoused so vigorously and imaginatively that Smetana has since become recognized as the father of Bohemian national music. His most significant works are the folk opera, The Bartered Bride, and a cycle of orchestral tone poems collectively entitled My Country (Má Vlast). Smetana was stricken by deafness in 1874, despite which he continued creating important works, among them being operas and an autobiographical string quartet called From My Life (Aus meinem Leben). Total deafness was supplemented by insanity in 1883 which necessitated confinement in an asylum in Prague where he died on May 12, 1884.
The rich folk melodies and pulsating folk rhythms of native dance music overflow in Smetana’s music, providing it with much of its vitality and popular interest. Smetana’s gift at writing music in the style, idiom, and techniques of Bohemian folk dances is evident in many of his compositions, but nowhere more successfully than in his delightful folk comic opera, The Bartered Bride (Prodaná nevešta). This little opera, first performed in Prague on May 30, 1866, is the foundation on which Bohemian national music rests securely. It is a gay, lively picture of life in a small Bohemian village. The principal action involves the efforts of the village matchmaker to get Marie married to Wenzel, a dim-witted, stuttering son of the town’s wealthy landowner. But Marie is in love with Hans who, as it turns out, is also the son of the same landowner, though by a previous marriage. Through trickery, Hans manages to win Marie, though for a while matters become complicated when Marie is led to believe that Hans has deserted her.
In its first version, The Bartered Bride was presented as a play (by Karel Sabina) with incidental music by Smetana. Realizing that this work had operatic possibilities, Smetana amplified and revised his score, and wrote recitatives for the spoken dialogue. In this new extended form the opera was heard in Vienna in 1892 and was a sensation; from then on, and to the present time, it has remained one of the most lovable comic operas ever written.
There are three colorful and dynamic folk dances in this opera which contribute powerfully to the overall national identity, but whose impact on audiences is by no means lost when heard apart from the stage action. “The Dance of the Comedians” appears in the third act, when a circus troupe appears in the village square and entertains villagers with a spirited dance. The “Furiant”—a fiery type of Bohemian dance with marked cross rhythms—comes in the second act when villagers enter the local inn and perform a Corybantic dance. The “Polka,” a favorite Bohemian dance, comes as an exciting finish to the first act as local residents give vent to their holiday spirits during a festival in the village square.
The effervescent overture which precedes the first act is as popular as the dances. The merry first theme is given by strings and woodwind in unison against strong chords in brasses and timpani. This subject is simplified, at times in a fugal style, and is brought to a climax before a second short subject is stated by the oboe. Still a third charming folk tune appears, in violins and cellos, before the first main subject is recalled and developed. The coda, based on this first theme, carries the overture to a lively conclusion. Gustav Mahler, the eminent music director of the Vienna Royal Opera which gave this opera its first major success outside Bohemia, felt this overture was so much in the spirit of the entire work, and so basic to its overall mood and structure, that he preferred using it before the second act so that latecomers into the opera house might not miss it.
Smetana’s most famous work for orchestra comes from his cycle of six national tone poems entitled My Country (Má Vlast), which he wrote between 1874 and 1879 in a tonal tribute to his native land. Each of the tone poems is a picture of a different facet of Bohemian life, geography, and background. The most famous composition of this set is The Moldau (Vltava), a portrait of the famous Bohemian river. This is a literal tonal representation of the following descriptive program interpolated by the composer in his published score:
“Two springs gush forth in the shade of the Bohemian forest, the one warm and spouting, the other cold and tranquil. Their waves, gayly rushing onward over their rocky beds, unite and glisten in the rays of the morning sun. The forest brook, fast hurrying on, becomes the river Vltava, which, flowing ever on through Bohemia’s valleys, grows to be a mighty stream; it flows through thick woods in which the joyous noise of the hunt and the notes of the hunter’s horn are heard ever nearer and nearer; it flows through grass-grown pastures and lowlands where a wedding feast is celebrated with song and dancing. At night the wood and water nymphs revel in its shining waves, in which many fortresses and castles are reflected as witnesses of the past glory of knighthood and the vanished warlike fame of bygone ages. At St. John Rapids the stream rushes on, winding in and out through the cataracts, and hews out a path for itself with its foaming waves through the rocky chasm into the broad river bed in which it flows on in majestic repose toward Prague, welcomed by time-honored Vysehrad, whereupon it vanishes in the far distance from the poet’s gaze.”
The rippling flow of the river Moldau is portrayed by fast figures in the strings, the background for a broad and sensual folk song representing the river itself heard in violins and woodwind. Hunting calls are sounded by the horns, after which a lusty peasant dance erupts from the full orchestra. Nymphs and naiads disport to the strains of a brief figure in the woodwind. A transition by the wind brings back the beautiful Moldau song. A climax is built up, after which the setting becomes once again serene. The Moldau continues its serene course towards Prague.