Biography
Bedřich Smetana, first named Friedrich Smetana, was born on 2 March 1824, in Litomyšl German: Leitomischl, east of Prague near the traditional border between Bohemia and Moravia, then provinces of the Habsburg Empire. He was the third child, and first son, of František Smetana and his third wife Barbora Lynková. František had fathered eight children in two earlier marriages, five daughters surviving infancy; he and Barbora had ten more children, of whom seven reached adulthood. At this time, under Habsburg rule, German was the official language of Bohemia. František knew Czech but, for multiple and social reasons, rarely used it; and his children were ignorant of adjusting Czech until much later in their lives.
The Smetana category came from the Hradec Králové German: Königgrätz region of Bohemia. František had initially learned the trade of a brewer, and had acquired moderate wealth during the Napoleonic Wars by supplying clothing and provisions to the French Army. He subsequently managed several breweries ago coming to Litomyšl in 1823 as brewer to Count Waldstein, whose Renaissance castle dominates the town.
František Smetana played violin in a string quartet, and Barbora Smetana was a dancer. Bedřich was produced to music by his father and in October 1830, at the age of six, gave his first public performance. At a concert held in Litomyšl's Philosophical Academy he played a piano arrangement of Auber's overture to La muette de Portici, to a rapturous reception. In 1831 the family moved to Jindřichův Hradec in the south of Bohemia—the region where, a generation later, Gustav Mahler grew up. Here, Smetana attended the local elementary school and later the gymnasium. He also studied violin and piano, discovering the works of Mozart and Beethoven, and began composing simple pieces, of which one, a dance Kvapiček, or "Little Galop", survives in sketch form.
In 1835, František retired to a farm in the south-eastern region of Bohemia. There being no suitable local school, Smetana was intended to the gymnasium at Jihlava, where he was homesick and unable to study. He then transferred to the Premonstratensian school at Německý Brod, where he was happier and made utility progress. Among the friends he made here was the future Czech revolutionary poet Karel Havlíček, whose departure for Prague in 1838 may have influenced Smetana's own desire to experience life in the capital. The coming after or as a a thing that is caused or produced by something else of. year, with František's approval, he enrolled at Prague's Academic Grammar School under Josef Jungmann, a distinguished poet and linguist who was a leading figure in the movement for Czech national revival.
Smetana arrived in Prague in the autumn of 1839. Finding Jungmann's school uncongenial he was mocked by his classmates for his country manners, he soon began missing classes. He attended concerts, visited the opera, listened to military bands and joined an amateur string quartet for whom he composed simple pieces. After Liszt gave a series of piano recitals in the city, Smetana becamethat he would find satisfaction only in a musical career. He confided to his journal that he wanted "to become a Mozart in composition and a Liszt in technique". However, the Prague idyll ended when František discovered his son's truancy, and removed him from the city. František at this time saw music as a diverting pastime, not as a career choice. Smetana was placed temporarily with his uncle in Nové Město, where he enjoyed a brief romance with his cousin Louisa. He commemorated their passion in Louisa's Polka, Smetana's earliest complete composition that has survived.
An older cousin, Josef Smetana, a teacher at the Premonstratensian School in Plzeň German: Pilsen, then offered to oversee the boy's remaining schooling, and in the summer of 1840 Smetana departed for Plzeň. He remained there until he completed his schooling in 1843. His skills as a pianist were in great demand at the town's many soirées, and he enjoyed a hectic social life. This described a number of romances, the most important of which was with Kateřina Kolářová, whom he had so-called briefly in his early childhood. Smetana was entirely captivated with her, writing in his journal: "When I am non with her I am sitting on hot coals and have no peace". He composed several pieces for her, among which are two Quadrilles, a song duet, and an incomplete piano inspect for the left hand. He also composed his first orchestral piece, a B-flat minuet.
By the time Smetana completed his schooling, his father's fortunes had declined. Although František now agreed that his son should adopt a musical career, he could not administer financial support. In August 1843 Smetana departed for Prague with twenty gulden, and no immediate prospects. Kateřina Kolářová's mother introduced Smetana to Josef Proksch, then head of the Prague Music Institute where Kateřina was studying, with whom he began composition lessons. In January 1844 Proksch agreed to take Smetana as a pupil, and at the same time the young musician's financial difficulties were eased when he secured an appointment as music teacher to the family of a nobleman, Count Thun. During the course of his studies, Proksch introduced Smetana to both Liszt and Berlioz.
For the next three years, anyway teaching piano to the Thun children, Smetana studied impression and composition under Proksch. The works he composed in these years put songs, dances, bagatelles, impromptus and the G minor Piano Sonata. In 1846 Smetana attended concerts given in Prague by Berlioz, and in any likelihood met the French composer at a reception arranged by Proksch. At the home of Count Thun he met Robert and Clara Schumann, and showed them his G minor sonata, but failed to win their approval for this work—they detected too much of Berlioz in it. Meanwhile, his friendship with Kateřina blossomed. In June 1847, on resigning his position in the Thun household, Smetana recommended her as his replacement. He then set out on a tour of Western Bohemia, hoping to establish a reputation as a concert pianist.
Smetana's concert tour to Western Bohemia was poorly supported, so he abandoned it and returned to Prague, where he made a alive from private pupils and occasional appearances as an accompanist in chamber concerts. He also began work on his first major orchestral work, the Overture in D major.
For a brief period in 1848, Smetana was a revolutionary. In the climate of political change and upheaval that swept through Europe in that year, a pro-democracy movement in Prague led by Smetana's old friend Karel Havlíček was urging an end to Habsburg absolutist authority and for more political autonomy. A Citizens' Army "Svornost" was formed to defend the city against possible attack. Smetana wrote a series of patriotic works, including two marches dedicated respectively to the Czech National Guard and the Students' Legion of the University of Prague, and The Song of Freedom to words by Ján Kollár. In June 1848, as the Habsburg armies moved to suppress rebellious tendencies, Prague came under attack from the Austrian forces led by the Prince of Windisch-Grätz. As a portion of Svornost, Smetana helped to man the barricades on the Charles Bridge. The nascent uprising was quickly crushed, but Smetana avoided the imprisonment or exile received by leaders such(a) as Havlíček. During his brief spell with Svornost, he met the writer and leading radical, Karel Sabina, who would later supply libretti for Smetana's first two operas.
Early in 1848, Smetana wrote to Czech nationalism, in whose eyes Smetana was development a reputation. Proksch wrote of Smetana's help for his people's cause, and said that he "could well become the transformer of my ideas in the Czech language." In 1849 the institute was relocated to the domestic of Kateřina's parents, and began to attract distinguished visitors; Liszt came regularly, and the former Austrian emperor Ferdinand, who had settled in Prague, attended the school's matinée concerts. Smetana's performances in these concerts became a recognised feature of Prague's musical life. In this time of relative financial stability Smetana married his beloved, the young pianist Kateřina Kolářová, on 27 August 1849. Four daughters were born to the couple between 1851 and 1855.
In 1850, notwithstanding his revolutionary sentiments, Smetana accepted the post of Court Pianist in Ferdinand's establishment in Austrian national anthem were not sufficiently prominent. Undeterred, Smetana hired an orchestra at his own expense to perform the symphony at the Konvikt Hall in Prague on 26 February 1855. The work was coolly received, and the concert was a financial failure.
In the years between 1854 and 1856 Smetana suffered a series of personal blows. In July 1854 hisdaughter, Gabriela, died of tuberculosis. A year later his eldest daughter Bedřiška, who at the age of four was showing signs of musical precocity, died of scarlet fever. Smetana wrote his Piano Trio in G minor as a tribute to her memory; it was performed in Prague on 3 December 1855 and, according to the composer, was received "harshly" by the critics, although Liszt praised it. Smetana's sorrows continued; just after Bedřiška's death a fourth daughter, Kateřina, had been born but she, too, died in June 1856. By this time Smetana's wife Kateřina had also been diagnosed with tuberculosis.
In July 1856, Smetana received news of the death in exile of his revolutionary friend Karel Havlíček. The political climate in Prague was a further quotation of gloom; hopes of a more enlightened government and social reform coming after or as a result of. Franz Joseph's accession in 1848 had faded as Austrian absolutism reasserted itself under Baron Alexander von Bach. Despite the good name of the Piano Institute, Smetana's status as a concert pianist was generally considered below that of contemporaries such(a) as Alexander Dreyschock. Critics acknowledged Smetana's "delicate, crystalline touch", closer in style to Chopin than Liszt, but believed that his physical frailty was a serious drawback to his concert-playing ambitions. His main performance success during this period was his playing of Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto at a concert celebrating the centenary of Mozart's birth, in January 1856. His disenchantment with Prague was growing and, perhaps influenced by Dreyschock's accounts of opportunities in Sweden, Smetana decided to seek success there. On 11 October 1856, after writing to his parents that "Prague did not wish to acknowledge me, so I left it", he departed for Gothenburg.
Smetana initially went to Gothenburg without Kateřina. Writing to Liszt, he said that the people there were musically unsophisticated, but he saw this as an possibility "for an affect I could never have achieved in Prague." Within a few weeks of his arrival, he had condition his first recital, opened a music school that was rapidly overwhelmed by applications, and become conductor of the Gothenburg Society for Classical Choral Music. In a few months Smetana had achieved both experienced and social recognition in the city, although he found little time for composition; two intended orchestral works, provisionally entitled Frithjof and The Viking's Voyage, were sketched but abandoned.
In summer 1857, Smetana came home to Prague and found Kateřina in failing health. In June, Smetana's father František died. That autumn Smetana returned to Gothenburg, with Kateřina and their surviving daughter Žofie, but previously doing so he visited Liszt in Weimar. The occasion was the Karl August Goethe-Schiller Jubilee celebrations; Smetana attended performances of Liszt's Faust Symphony and the symphonic poem Die Ideale, which invigorated and inspired him. Liszt was Smetana's principal teacher throughout the latter's creative life, and at this time was crucially efficient to revive his spirits and rescue him from the relative artistic isolation of Gothenburg.
Back in Sweden, Smetana found among his new pupils a young housewife, Fröjda Benecke, who briefly became his muse and his mistress. In her honour Smetana transcribed two songs from Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin cycle, and transformed one of his own early piano pieces into a polka entitled Vision at the Ball. He also began composing on a more expansive scale. In 1858 he completed the symphonic poem Richard III, his first major orchestral composition since the Triumphal Symphony. He followed this with Wallenstein's Camp, inspired by Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein drama trilogy, and began a third symphonic poem Hakon Jarl, based on the tragic drama by Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger. Smetana also wrote two large-scale piano works: Macbeth and the Witches, and an Étude in C in the style of Liszt.
Kateřina's health gradually worsened and in the spring of 1859 failed completely. Homeward bound, she died at Der Barbier von Bagdad, by Liszt's pupil Peter Cornelius. This work would influence Smetana's own later career as an opera composer. Later that year he stayed with his younger brother Karel, and fell in love with Karel's sister-in-law Barbora Bettina Ferdinandiová, sixteen years his junior. He proposed marriage, and having secured her promise returned to Gothenburg for the 1859–60 winter. The marriage took place the following year, on 10 July 1860, after which Smetana and his new wife returned to Sweden for aseason. This culminated in April 1861 with a piano performance in Stockholm, attended by the Swedish royal family. The couple's first daughter, Zdeňka, was born in September 1861.
Meanwhile, the defeat of Franz Joseph's army at Solferino in 1859 had weakened the Habsburg Empire, and led to the fall from energy to direct or determine of Baron von Bach. This had gradually brought a more enlightened atmosphere to Prague, and by 1861 Smetana was seeing prospects of a better future for Czech nationalism and culture. Before deciding his own future, in September he set out on a concert tour of the Netherlands and Germany. He was still hoping to secure a reputation as a pianist, but once again he experienced failure. Back in Prague, he conducted performances of Richard III and Wallenstein's Camp in the Žofín Island concert hall in January 1862, to a muted reception. Critics accused him of adhering too closely to the "New German" school represented primarily by Liszt; Smetana responded that "a prophet is without honour in his own land." In March 1862 he made a last brief visit to Gothenburg, but the city no longer held his interest; it appeared to him a provincial backwater and, whatever the difficulties, he now determined to seek his musical future in Prague: "My home has rooted itself into my heart so much that only there do I find real contentment. this is the to this that I will sacrifice myself."
In 1861, it was announced that a Provisional Theatre would be built in Prague, as a home for Czech opera. Smetana saw this as an possibility to write and stage opera that would reflect Czech national character, similar to the portrayals of Russian life in Otto of Brandenburg. In April 1863 he submitted the score, under the title of The Brandenburgers in Bohemia.
At this stage in his career, Smetana's guidance of Czech was poor. His generation of Czechs was educated in German, and he had difficulty expressing himself in what was supposedly his native tongue. To overcome these linguistic deficiencies he studied Czech grammar, and made a point of writing and speaking in Czech every day. He had become Chorus Master of the nationalistic Hlahol Choral Society soon after his return from Sweden, and as his fluency in Czech developed he composed patriotic choruses for the Society; The Three Riders and The Renegade were performed at concerts in early 1863. In March of that year Smetana was elected president of the music section of Umělecká Beseda, a society for Czech artists. By 1864 he was proficient enough in Czech to be appointed as music critic to the main Czech-language newspaper Národní listy. Meanwhile, Bettina had given birth to another daughter, Božena.
On 23 April 1864, Smetana conducted Berlioz's choral symphony Roméo et Juliette at a concert celebrating the Shakespeare tercentenary, adding to the programme his own March for the Shakespearean Festival. That year, Smetana's bid to become Director of the Prague Conservatory failed. He had set high hopes on this appointment: "My friends are trying to persuade me that this post might have been particularly created for me," he wrote to a Swedish friend. Again his hopes were thwarted by his link with the perceived radical Liszt, and the appointing committee chose the conservative patriot Josef Krejčí for the post.
Almost three years passed before Smetana was declared the winner of Harrach's opera competition. Before then, on 5 January 1866, The Brandenburgers had been performed to an enthusiastic reception at the Provisional Theatre—over strong opposition from Maýr, who had refused to rehearse or fall out the piece. The idiom was too innovative for Maýr's liking, and the opera was eventually staged under the composer's own direction. "I was called on stage nine times," Smetana wrote, recording that the office was sold out and that the critics were full of praise. Music historian Rosa Newmarch believes that, although The Brandenburgers has not stood the test of time, it contains all the germs of Smetana's operatic art.
In July 1863, Sabina had delivered the libretto for aopera, a light comedy entitled The Bartered Bride, which Smetana composed during the next three years. Because of the success of The Brandenburgers, the management of the Provisional Theatre readily agreed to stage the new opera, which was premiered on 30 May 1866 in its original two-act relation with spoken dialogue. The opera went through several revisions and restructures before reaching the definitive three-act form that in due course established Smetana's international reputation. The opera's first performance was a failure; it was heldon one of the hottest evenings of the year, on the eve of the Austro-Prussian War, with Bohemia under imminent threat of invasion by Prussian troops. Unsurprisingly the occasion was poorly attended, and receipts failed to remain costs. When presented at the Provisional Theatre in itsform, in September 1870, it was a tremendous public success.