Czech music can be compared to a huge, spreading tree which is larger and larger year by year since it has frown from the roots of musical talents of Czech people. It has had a wide history with a little influence of the world music. There were a lot of musicians who brought fame to the Czech nation but none of them was as brilliant as Bedřich Smetana.
Smetana did not come to a musical dessert, music had developed here thousands years before, there had been folk songs, typical dance music, chamber music, even operas. Smetana rose from these roots; he summarized all the previous items. However, his goal was to create the most original and highly national music. Once, as a student, he wrote in his diary he wanted to be:“Mozart in composition, Liszt in technique”. His goal was: “to prove that we Czechs are not only efficient but also creative musicians”.
He was born on March 2, 1824 in Litomyšl. Smetana was a son of a brewer. He studied piano and violin from an early age, and played in an amateur string quartet with other members of his family. Smetana attended a high school in Plzeň from 1840 to 1843. He studied music in Prague, despite initial resistance from his father. He secured a post as music master to a noble family, and in 1848 received funds from Franz Liszt to establish his own music school.
September 1855 marked the tragic death of his second child, his beloved four-year-old daughter Bedřiska. When his third child died nine months later, he committed himself to composition, producing the Piano Trio in G minor. This piece is full of sadness and despair, making use of phrases that are cut short, possibly in resemblance to his daughter's own life.
In 1856, Smetana moved to Gothenburg, Sweden, where he taught, conducted and gave chamber music recitals. In 1863, back in Prague, he opened a new school of music dedicated to promoting specifically Czech music. By 1874 he had become deaf from syphilis, but he continued to compose; Má vlast was written after his deafness ensued. As if plain deafness were not enough, Smetana also suffered from 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."
His string quartet in E minor, Z mého života (From My Life, composed in 1876), the first of only two quartets, is an autobiographical work. The final movement is punctuated by a piercing high E in the first violin which, Smetana explained, represents the devastating effects of his tinnitus. He may also be hinting at this personal misfortune with the piccolo scoring in Má vlast.
In 1883 Smetana, suffering further progressive neurological effects of his syphilis, finally became insane, and was taken to a mental hospital in Prague, where he died the following year. He is interred in the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague.
Smetana is noted as being the first composer to write music that was specifically Czech in character. Many of his operas are on Czech themes, the best known being the comedy The Bartered Bride (1866). He used many Czech dance rhythms and his melodies sometimes resemble folk songs. He was a great influence on Antonín Dvořák, who similarly used Czech themes in his works.
A complete chronological list of Smetana's operas:
Č. Havránek (sexta)
Česky
