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

Smetana wished to secure an independent existence as a musician for himself. He tried making a living as a virtuoso, but the concert tour (to western Bohemia) of an unknown pianist with a most demanding programme (Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt filled out with his own piano fantasy Böhmische Melodien) ended in failure. So on 28 January 1848 he requested permission from the Provincial Government to open a music institute: his main concern was to acquire the financial means to open it. In straitened circumstances he wrote a letter to Liszt (23 March 1848), who was known for his support of young artists, asking him to accept the dedication of his piano cycle Six morceaux caractéristiques op.1 and help find a publisher for it. He also asked for the loan of 400 gulden. Liszt encouraged Smetana with words but no loan. He accepted the dedication and, after a reminder in December 1848 when Smetana looked him up on his way through Prague, Liszt recommended op.1 to the Leipzig publisher Kistner, who published it in 1851.

At the beginning of the summer, permission for the institute was granted and on 8 August 1848 it began its activities. Smetana supplemented his income from the generally prospering institute with fees from private lessons, especially in aristocratic families (this included visits to the castle to play to the deposed Emperor Ferdinand). Thanks to this he was able to start a family. On 27 August 1849 he married Kateřina Kolářová, who bore him four daughters, three of whom, however, died by 1856. The public concerts of the pupils from the institute, with Smetana's participation, became a respected part of Prague musical life. In addition Smetana took part in the musical life of the town as a chamber player and as an organizer of chamber concerts. In 1854 he participated in the Beethoven celebration, in 1856 in the even grander Mozart celebrations, when his piano playing was widely praised by the critics. On 26 February 1855 he organized his first and successful independent concert where he made his début as a conductor, giving the première of his Triumf-Sinfonie.

Smetana was drawn into public events especially by the group of Prague artists, Concordia, founded in 1846. And it was more an attempt to attract attention to himself than a wish to manifest deeply felt political convictions which led him to the production of occasional pieces in the revolutionary year 1848. He dedicated two piano marches to two quite different organizations, the National Guard (organized by the state to protect persons and property) and to the radical student legion, which was ultimately banned by the state. His unison march with piano Píseň svobody (‘Song of Freedom’), his only piece up to 1860 with a Czech text, did not, however, come before the public. After the marches, which were his first compositions to be published and one of which also appeared in editions orchestrated by the bandmaster Jan Pavlis, followed the publication in Prague of his Trois polkas de salon and Trois polkas poètiques. These initiated a whole series culminating at the end of the 1870s with the České tance (‘Czech Dances’), which tended towards a type of idealized dance ‘in the manner of Chopin's mazurkas’, he noted in his diary in 1859. He also contributed to the fashionable genre of albumleaves, which he later arranged in cycles. Smetana hoped for a response to his work and sent some of his pieces for an opinion to his models Clara Schumann and Liszt.

After his first substantial orchestral work, the Jubel-Ouverture (1848–9), he completed his first and only symphony in 1854. This Triumf-Sinfonie, however, intended to be dedicated to the marriage of Franz Joseph I with Elisabeth of Bavaria, is also just another example of his attempts to attain artistic and social prestige. His finest work at this point in his life was his Piano Trio in G minor. Smetana was hurt by the lack of comprehension among the Prague critics after the première. All the more satisfaction, then, he derived from Liszt's recognition of this work. At last he had occasion to get to know him personally over a longer period when Liszt was in Prague rehearsing his Missa solemnis zur Einweihung des Basilika in Gran, which he conducted in September 1856. By that time, however, Smetana had decided to leave Prague and take up the offer mediated by the pianist Alexander Dreyschock to become a music teacher in the Swedish town of Göteborg.

Smetana, Bedřich