The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. In the 29-volume second edition. Grove Music Online /General Editor – Stanley Sadie. Oxford University Press. 2001.

Smetana, Bedřich [Friedrich]

(b Litomyšl, 2 March 1824; d Prague, 12 May 1884). Czech composer, conductor and critic. The first Czech nationalist composer and the most important of the new generation of Czech opera composers writing from the 1860s. His eight operas established a canon of Czech operas to serve as models for Czech nationalist opera and have remained in the Czech repertory ever since. Such was the force of his musical personality that his musical style became synonymous with Czech nationalist style, his name a rallying point for the polemics which were to continue in Czech musical life into the next century.

1. Youth and training, 1824–47.

2. At the beginnings of a musical career, 1848–56.

3. In search of recognition abroad: Sweden, 1856–61.

4. In national life, 1862–74.

5. Final years, 1874–84.

6. Operas.

7. Orchestral works.

8. Chamber music.

9. Piano works.

10. Posthumous reputation.

WORKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MARTA OTTLOVÁ (1–5, 7–9, work-list), MILAN POSPÍŠIL (bibliography), JOHN TYRRELL (6, 10)

1. Youth and training, 1824–47.

As a master brewer Smetana's father František (Franz) Smetana (1777–1857) was a comparatively rich man with cultural pretentions which included domestic music-making as a member of a string quartet. He initiated his son into the elements of music when he was four. Soon, however, he entrusted him to the care of a tradesman Jan Chmelík (1777–1849), who organized musical events for the owner of the estate, Count Waldstein, from whom Smetana's father rented the Litomyšl brewery. At first Smetana learnt the violin, but the piano took his fancy even more. He demonstrated his talent publicly at the age of six at a student concert in Litomyšl, where he played a piano arrangement of the overture to Auber's La muette di Portici. His father, however, had different plans for his son and so, after finishing his main schooling, Smetana continued at the gymnasium. He attended several: in Neuhaus (now Jindřichův Hradec) 1834–5, Iglau (Jihlava) 1835–6, Deutschbrod (Havlíčkův Brod) 1836–9, and finally in Prague 1839–40. Here his not very successful studies culminated in his abandoning school altogether, attracted as he was more to the social and cultural life of Prague. With fellow students he played in a quartet for which he arranged pieces heard at promenade concerts by military bands. The seriousness which even then he brought to bear on his musical activities is attested by the first list of compositions which he entered in his diary in 1841, although only one of these pieces survives intact: his Louisen-Polka for piano.

After the inevitable break with his father, Smetana was saved from a career as a clerk by his older cousin, Josef František Smetana, a Czech patriot and teacher at the Premonstratensian Gymnasium in Plzeň, where, under his watchful eye, Smetana completed his studies. An enthusiastic dancer, who liked entertaining a whole company, Smetana composed mainly dance and salon pieces for piano at that time ‘in total ignorance of a spiritual musical education’, as he later noted on the Overture in C minor for four hands. But he also recorded his aims in his diary (23 January 1843): ‘By the grace of God and with his help I will one day be a Liszt in technique and a Mozart in composition’. With the agreement of his father he returned to Prague in October 1843, having decided to devote himself only to music.

In view of his father's worsened financial circumstances Smetana was unable to depend on help from home and his plans changed into worries over his very existence. However, fortune smiled on him at the beginning of 1844 when, on the recommendation of the director of the Prague Conservatory Johann Friedrich Kittl, he acquired a place as music teacher to the family of Count Leopold Thun. Furthermore Anna Kolářová (Kolar), mother of his later wife Kateřina (Katharina), whom Smetana had worshipped from his time in Plzeň, introduced him to Joseph Proksch, with whom Kateřina was studying the piano and who now accepted Smetana as a private composition pupil. Proksch's musical institute belonged to the most important in Prague, his teaching methods were the most modern in Europe. He taught composition from the second edition (1841–2) of the latest textbook, Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition by Adolf Bernhard Marx, which, in line with Proksch's views, was based mainly on Beethoven but also drew from Berlioz, Chopin and the Leipzig circle and exerted a huge influence on Smetana's development as a composer. Smetana did indeed start from scratch. A fine series of assignments survives demonstrating a systematic development from simple harmonic exercises to a mastery of forms, crowned in 1846 by the Piano Sonata in G minor. He proudly showed the piece to Robert and Clara Schumann, who were giving concerts in Prague in January 1847 but, as we read in their diaries, they disapproved of it as being too Berlioz-like. Naturally Smetana did not confine himself to set assignments. He wrote piano pieces inspired by the refined salon and virtuoso output of the time (Henselt, Chopin, Schumann) and his first piano cycle, Bagatelles et impromptus. In the middle of 1847 Smetana completed his studies with Proksch and almost at the same time (1 June 1847) ended his teaching at the Thuns. The reason for his departure from the Thuns is given in his diary for 1847: ‘I wanted to travel the world as a virtuoso, accumulating money and gaining a public position as a choirmaster, conductor or teacher’. He also planned to organize his own orchestra.

Smetana, Bedřich