Background

Bedřich Smetana was born as Friedrich Smetana on 2 March 1824, in Litomyšl, east of Prague near the traditional border between Bohemia and Moravia, then provinces of the Habsburg Empire. He was the third child, and first son, of František Smetana and his third wife Barbora Lynková. František had fathered eight children in two earlier marriages, five daughters surviving infancy; he and Barbora had ten more children, of whom seven reached adulthood. At this time, under Habsburg rule, German was the official language of Bohemia. František knew Czech but, for business and social reasons, rarely used it; and his children were ignorant of the correct literary Czech until much later in their lives.

The Smetana family came from the Hradec Králové region of Bohemia. František had initially learned the trade of a brewer, and had acquired moderate wealth during the Napoleonic Wars by supplying clothing and provisions to the French Army. He subsequently managed several breweries before coming to Litomyšl in 1823 as brewer to Count Waldstein, whose Renaissance castle dominates the town.

Education

Bedřich was introduced to music by his father and in October 1830, at the age of six, gave his first public performance. At a concert held in Litomyšl's Philosophical Academy he played a piano arrangement of Auber's overture to La muette de Portici, to a rapturous reception. In 1831 the family moved to Jindřichův Hradec in the south of Bohemia—the region where, a generation later, Gustav Mahler grew up. Here, Smetana attended the local elementary school and later the gymnasium. He also studied violin and piano, discovering the works of Mozart and Beethoven, and began composing simple pieces, of which one, a dance (Kvapiček, or "Little Galop"), survives in sketch form.

In 1835, František retired to a farm in the south-eastern region of Bohemia. There being no suitable local school, Smetana was sent to the gymnasium at Jihlava, where he was homesick and unable to study. He then transferred to the Premonstratensian school at Německý Brod, where he was happier and made good progress. Among the friends he made here was the future Czech revolutionary poet Karel Havlíček, whose departure for Prague in 1838 may have influenced Smetana's own desire to experience life in the capital. The following year, with František's approval, he enrolled at Prague's Academic Grammar School under Josef Jungmann, a distinguished poet and linguist who was a leading figure in the movement for Czech national revival.

Career

He met Liszt, who subsequently influenced him greatly, and with whom he afterwards stayed at Weimar. In 1856 Smetana accepted Alexander Dreyschock's suggestion to go as conductor of the Philharmonic Society at Gothenburg. There he remained five years, when, owing to his wife's ill-health, he returned to Prague after a successful concert tour. The death of his wife at Dresden on their return caused Smetana to change his mind, and he went back to Sweden. But the opening of the Interims Theater in 1866, and the offer of its conductorship, induced his return. In Sweden he had already written Hakon Jar', Richard III. , and Wallenstein's Lager, and had completed his opera. Die Brandenburger in Bohmen (5th January 1866). Five months later it was followed by his best-known opera, Die verkaufte Braut, and in 1868 Dalibor was given. Between 1874 and 1882 he produced Zwei Witwen, Hubicka (Der Kuss), Tajewstvi (Das Geheimnis), Certova Siena, and Die Teufelsmauer, as well as the "grand prize" opera Libuse, written for the opening of the National Theatre at Prague, 11th June 1881. In Die Teufelsmauer were clear signs of decay in Smetana's powers, he having already in 1874 lost his sense of hearing. In 1879, Smetana had written to a friend, the Czech poet Jan Neruda, revealing fears of the onset of madness. By the winter of 1882–83 he was experiencing depression, insomnia, and hallucinations, together with giddiness, cramp and a temporary loss of speech. On 23 April his family, unable to nurse him any longer, removed him to the Kateřinky Lunatic Asylum in Prague, where he died on 12 May 1884.

A great deal of his pianoforte music is interesting, the Stammbuchbleitter, for example; while his series of symphonic poems, entitled Mein Vaterland (Vlast), and his beautiful stringquartet, Aus meinem Leben, have made the tour of the civilized world. He was an admirable pianist, and in many ways justified his countrymen's title of the "Czechisch Beethoven. "

Achievements

• There is broad agreement among most commentators that Smetana created a canon of Czech opera where none had previously existed, and that he developed a style of music in all his compositions that equated with the emergent Czech national spirit.
  
  A permanent memorial to Smetana's life and work is the Bedřich Smetana Museum in Prague, founded in 1926 within the Charles University's Institute for Musicology. In 1936 the museum moved to the former Waterworks building on the banks of the Vltava, and since 1976 has been part of the Czech Museum of Music.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Smetana: String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor (From My Life)

    ( The composition of the first string quartet "From My Li...)

  • Smetana: Vltava (The Moldau)

    ( "Vltava" (The Moldau) is Smetana's most famous and freq...)

  • Smetana: Music From Bohemia (Hardcover book and CD) (Classic Composers)

    (Includes excerpts from The Bartered Bride, String Quartet...)

  • DIE MOLDAU PIANO SOLO

    (A group of resourceful kids start "solution-seekers.com,"...)

  • Smetana: Rondo (Piano Ensemble: 2 Pianos, 8 Hands)

    (Rondo (Original) by Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884). Edited ...)

  • Quartet "From My Life": For Two Violins, Viola and Cello (Kalmus Edition)

    (A string quartet, composed by Bedrich Smetana.)

  • Smetana, Bedrich - Piano Trio in g minor, Op. 15 Violin, Cello, and Piano - Published International

    (Smetana, Bedřich - Piano Trio in g minor, Op. 15 - Violin...)

  • Bohemian Polka - Piano Solo - simplified

    (Intermediate piano teaching piece)

Views

Quotations: "I am not ashamed to reply to you in my mother tongue, however imperfectly, and am glad to be able to show that my fatherland means more to me than anything else. "

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

"You from within our glasses, you lusty golden brew, whoever imbibes takes fire from you. The young and the old sing your praises. Here's to beer, here's to cheer, here's to beer. "

Personality

Smetana's biographers describe him as physically frail and unimpressive in appearance yet, at least in his youth, he had a joie-de-vivre that women evidently found attractive. He was also excitable, passionate and strong-willed, determined to make his career in music whatever the hardships, over the wishes of his father who wanted him to become a brewer or a civil servant. Throughout his career he stood his ground; when under the severest of criticism for the "Wagnerism" in Dalibor he responded by writing Libuše, even more firmly based on the scale and concept of Wagnerian music drama. His personal life became stressful; his marriage to Bettina was loveless, and effectively broke down altogether in the years of illness and relative poverty towards the end of his life. Little of his relationships with his children is on record, although on the day that he was transferred to the asylum, Žofie was "crying as though her heart would break".

Quotes from others about the person

• Harold Schonberg observes that "Smetana was the one who founded Czech music, but Antonín Dvořák . .. was the one who popularized it. "

Connections

Smetana and Katerina got married on 27 August 1849 and the couple had four daughters. He lost his second daughter Gabriela in July 1854 due to tuberculosis. A year later, he received another blow as his eldest daughter Bedriška died of scarlet fever. Struck with grief, Smetana paid a tribute to her with a Piano Trio in G minor. His wife gave birth to his fourth daughter immediately after the death of Bedriška, but she too died in June 1856. Destiny continued its cruel game with Smetana and this time the bad luck lighted on his wife as she was with tuberculosis. Adding to his grief, his father František died in 1957. Smetana returned to Gothenburg with his wife Katerina and daughter Žofie. Before starting, he visited Liszt in Weimar and became Smetana’s principal teacher throughout his creative life. Katerina's health was becoming worse day after day and she died at Dresden on 19 April 1859. After Katarina’s death, Smetana left his daughter Žofie with Katerina's mother and spent time with Liszt in Weimar. It was then that he got to know about the comic opera “Der Barbier von Bagdad” composed by Liszt’s pupil Peter Cornelius and was impressed by this work. Smetana then stayed with his younger brother Karel, where he met his brother’s sister-in-law Barbora (Bettina) Ferdinandiová, who was sixteen years younger to him. He married Bettina on 10 July 1860 and returned to Sweden and had four. The couple’s first child, Zdenka, was born in September 1861. Bettina gave birth to their second daughter Božena in 1864.

Wife:

Katharina Kolar

She was a pianist, and with her founded a music school at Prague.

Friend:

Jan Neruda

References

• Bedrich Smetana: Myth, Music, and Propaganda (Eastman Studies in Music)
• Bedrich Smetana: Letters and Reminiscences
• Smetana