1

Student: Adis Jugo

Bedrich Smetana may not be known as greatest composers of that time like Haydn or
Bach when raised in discussion on the subject of the classical music. Nonetheless, it can't be
rejected and denied that Smetana's commitment and influence to Czechoslovakian music,
directly to their folk music, musical drama, and his most famous and most outstanding formation
of the symphonic tone poems have been something new and very large progress in the terms of
classical music of that time. Smetana's expertise as a writer and musical artist can be effectively
contrasted with that of Mozart or Beethoven, even in spite of him not being too known by the
generic society. It can be contended that Smetana is a general figure in the comprehensive
investigation of music and all through the established music group. The reason for which I
chose Bedrich Smetana for this essay is because of his work, beautiful and timeless
composition called "The Moldau", which is from his collection of symphonies "Mama Vlast"
(roughly translated as "My Country" or My Homeland). The Moldau or Vltava, as we call it in
our region, is a composiotionwhich musically refers to the Moldau river that courses through the
nation of Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic, on its approach to Prague.

Smetana was born on 2nd March 1824. He was a Czech composer who initiated the
headway of a musical style which got the opportunity to be almost identified with his country's
desires to self-sufficient statehood. In his country and region around, he is seen as the father of
Czech music. Generally he is best known for his musical dramatization The Bartered Bride and

2
for the symphonic composition M vlast ("My Homeland"), which presents the history, legends
and scene of the creator's native land and neighborhood.

The Grove New Dictionary had portrayed Smetana's initial life similiarly to that of any
musical wonderkids of the established period. His dad, Frantiek Smetana was a sharp, but
amateur violinist, and also the first teacher of Bedrich who was the first surviving child of eleven
kids. Building himself as a talented musician at an exceptionally youthful age, Smetana
appeared to stray closer to all holistic musical learning for the majority of his initial years, being
affected by authors, for example, Liszt. Smetana married a novice musician Katerina Kolrov,
for whom he composed duets and some piano pieces.

By the time of his professional career in music in Prague, he had a lot of financial struggles that
led to him not to learning piano, nonetheless he did figure out how to cheat to get lessons of
compositon methods from Josef Proksch, and also he had figured out how to discover
steadiness as an inhabitant piano instructor to Count Leopold Thun's family from 1844 to 1847.
For the duration of Smetana's Life, there were numerous uprisings and also Austria's military
defeat in war which brought more liberal Czechoslovakia. Throughout this time, Smetana was
showing, teaching and executing as a musician in Sweden, until some critical liberal
concessions were in progress. Prior to this time in any case, complete restriction did not take
into consideration the foundation of Czechoslovakian musical drama and dramatization
theaters. Smetana then composed his most popular musical drama, The Bartered Bride, and
also different works, for example, the cycle of Ma Vlast, that is consisting of six symphonic
poems.
In his later life Smetana endured serious deafness in his fifties, which I will describe thoroughly
later on, and passed away because of physical and mental complexities of Syphillis, in asylum
when he was 60.

Ma Vlast

A Symphonic Tone Poem is a work that depicts a story or scene through the utilization of music,
in which the writer utilizes instrumentation and compositional methods as a part of request to
depict the man scene or purpose of center of the music.

Roger Kamien likewise depicts the stream of the entire work, presenting the piece by method for
runs the river is beginning in two sources, one hot and one cool, that stream together to turn
into one greater river The Moldau.

This piece of the symphonic ballad is fascinating as Smetana makes utilization of

First of major successes for Smetana was opera The Bartered Bride that was created in 1866,
which instantly gained him a status of Bohemias leading composer and because of this
composition he was employed in major Prague theater in a role of first conductor. The Bartered
Bride gained him also first international success. This opera was comical act in life of peasants,
and it has a lot of sequences in it that were based from Czech folk rhytms, on which Bedrich
was based when creaating this piece. After this opera, he created opera Dalibor in 1868, that
was more serious than his previous work. Main part was hero that was conceived as a symbol
of Czech soul. His orchestration called up on some critics, that said that he was bleak copy and
imitator of Richard Wagner. Nowadays, Dalibor is one of the biggest and most famous operas
in Czech Republic, but somehow never made it internationally, where it is practicly unknown.

4
In the end, Smetana got some nervous dissorder illnes. He was hearing noises in his head, and
sometimes also he had suffered of lapse in memory. In 1874 he was compelled to leave from
his directing position, and toward the end of that year, his hearing went full deaf. But finally, from
1874 to 1879 he was occuping himself working on a most famous cycle of six symphonic
ballads titled My Country. One of these poems from the collection was actually his best-known
composition - The Moldau (1874) and From Bohemia's Meadows and Forests (1875). He
finished his most important and most critical work in 1876, the string quartet called From My
Life. This string quartet is exceptional in his repertoire due to its personality. You can almost
feel what was happening to Smetana in that time, and in it you can hear harrowing screeches in
violins when the dancing stops before last steps. In the year of 1884, he was finally admitted to
mental institution, where he died just few months after.

Conclusion

Bedrich Smetana was very influental, inspirational artist, composer and writer, not just only in
Czech Republic, but in terms of classical music of that time. From his time till nowadays, he still
isnt recognized as he should be, and his compositions are something that driven classical
music in many new ways. Especially The Moldau, which is his greatest compositon and his
most important From My Life, which depicts Bedrich, as one of the greatest artist of that time,
not only in Czechoslovakia, but in Europe.

5
Works Cited
Essays in Musical Analysis Retrospect and Corrigenda
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://britannica.org
www.classical.net