Bedřich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana (2 March 1824 – 12 May 1884) is a Czech composer who pioneers the development of a musical style that becomes closely identified with his country's aspirations to independent statehood.

He is thus widely regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music.

Internationally, he is best known for his opera The Bartered Bride, for the symphonic cycle Má vlast ("My Fatherland"), which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer's native land, and for his First String Quartet From My Life.

Smetana is naturally gifted as a pianist, and gives his first public performance at the age of six.

After his conventional schooling, he studies music under Josef Proksch in Prague.

His first nationalistic music is written during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participates.

After failing to establish his career in Prague, he leaves for Sweden, where he sets up as a teacher and choirmaster in Gothenburg, and begins to write large-scale orchestral works.

During this period of his life, Smetana is twice married; of six daughters, three die in infancy.

In the early 1860s, a more liberal political climate in Bohemia encourages Smetana to return permanently to Prague.

He throws himself into the musical life of the city, primarily as a champion of the new genre of Czech opera.

In 1866, his first two operas, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride, are premiered at Prague's new Provisional Theater, the latter achieving great popularity.

In that same year, Smetana becomes the theater's principal conductor, but the years of his conductorship are marked by controversy.

Factions within the city's musical establishment consider his identification with the progressive ideas of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner inimical to the development of a distinctively Czech opera style.

This opposition interferes with his creative work, and may have hastened the health breakdown that precipitates his resignation from the theater in 1874.

By the end of 1874, Smetana has become completely deaf but, freed from his theater duties and the related controversies, he begins a period of sustained composition that continues for almost the rest of his life.

His contributions to Czech music are increasingly recognized and honored, but a mental collapse early in 1884 leads to his incarceration in an asylum, and his subsequent death.

Smetana's reputation as the founding father of Czech music has endured in his native country, where advocates have raised his status above that of his contemporaries and successors.

However, relatively few of Smetana's works are in the international repertory, and most foreign commentators tend to regard Antonín Dvořák as a more significant Czech composer.

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