The Bohemian music
works, chorals “Utonulá” (The Drowned Girl), “Dar za lásku” (The Love Token), etc.
Bedřich Smetana, the founder of the modern Bohemian music, was born at Litomyšl in eastern Bohemia on the 2nd of March, 1824. He made such rapid progress in his piano studies that at the age of six he appeared in public as a pianist. But for a long time thereafter he was unable to overcome his father’s opposition to a musician’s career. Finally he succeeded and came to Prague in October, 1843, rich in ideals, but poor in money. He went to Proksch, the famous piano teacher and pedagogue, and became one of the greatest Bohemian piano virtuosos of all time. For a short time, he studied also with Liszt at Weimar. Liszt was a sincere friend of Smetana till his death. In 1856 Smetana accepted Alexander Dreyschock’s suggestion to go as conductor of the Philharmonic Society to Gothenburg in Sweden, where he remained till 1861. Here he wrote his first symphonic poems, “Hakon Jarl”, “Richard III.” and “Wallenstein’s Camp”.
The opening of the Interim Theater in Prague induced Smetana’s return to the capital of Bohemia. This theater being a preparation for the present great Bohemian National Theater, he felt in his inmost heart that he was the only man who could become a founder of the modern Bohemian music. He the voice of the genius of his nation and came to fulfill his great mission.
Smetana was a wizard and a hero in one person.
A wizard, because he created the modern Bohemian music without any predecessors and put it at once on the level of the most modern music of his time. In the days he studied with Liszt at Weimar, Prague was still under the spell of Mozart whose epigon Tomášek was an absolute ruler in the musical life of Prague; later Verdi and Meyerbeer became idols of Prague musicians. Smetana found the way to connect Beethoven and Wagner with the character of the music of his nation, and so arouse his absolutely original style which is a confluence of modernism and the spirit of the Bohemian folk music. He did not use any folk songs in his works, but he wrote his own original music so perfectly in the spirit of the folk music that his operas, symphonic poems, etc., are immensely dear to
