The Bohemian music
especially “Vodník” (The Water Sprite), “Štědrý den” (The Christmas-Eve) and “Hakon” with texts of Karel Jaromír Erben and Jaroslav Vrchlický are splendid works, but even tried to create in the melodrama a further continuation of Wagner ideas about the musical drama: his “Hippodamia” is a scenic melodramatical trilogy consisting of three all evening dramas “Námluvy Pelopovy” (Pelops’ Wooing), “Smír Tantalův” (Tantalus’ Reconciliation), and “Smrt Hippodamie” (Hippodamia’s Death), where the dramas by Jaroslav Vrchlický, played on the scene, are continuously accompanied in the orchestra by symphonic music.
Among the contemporaries of the three coryphaei of the first period of the modern Bohemian music the most conspicuous were Vilém Blodek whose opera “V studni” (In the Well) is still very popular, Richard Rozkošný who wrote several good operas, “Svatojanské proudy” (St. John’s Rapids), “Popelka” (Cinderella), etc., Karel Šebor and Karel Bendl, composer of operas, but especially of choruses and songs which are in great favor with singing societies.
The leading composers of the living generation are Vítězslav Novák and Josef Suk. Novák wrote many excellent orchestral, chamber music and piano-forte works and in the last three years also operas (“Zvíkovský rarášek” The little imp of Zvíkov, and “Noc na Karlštejně”, A Night at Karlstein, the first after an historical comedy by Stroupežnický, the other by Vrchlický). Suk wrote also many orchestral chamber music and piano-forte works (among the best is the melodramatic music to Zeyer’s drama “Radúz a Mahulena” from which Suk made an orchestral suite known here under the title “The Fairy Tale”, and symphonic poems “Praga” and “Asrael”). In these later years both Novák and Suk are trying new paths broken by Richard Strauss, Debussy and other most radical modernists. Very prominent composers also are Karel Kovařovic, director of the opera at the Bohemia National Theater in Prague who wrote several operas, “Psohlavci” (The Dog-heads, which name was given to the Chods, hereditary borderers at the southwestern frontier of Bohemia, because of the dog head, symbol of watchfulness
