No great historical figure escapes it. The public places it on a pedestal and it becomes a monument to inertial worship. Saturday’s 200th anniversary of Bedřich Smetana’s birth is an opportunity to demystify his legacy and remember what he actually means to Czech culture. “For people, it is a myth that we either condemn or favor,” says musicologist and dramaturg of the Plzeň Opera Vojtěch Frank.
They sold two tractors, this is an aid thanks to which schoolchildren learn to recognize the names of Bedřich Smetana’s operas according to the first syllable. It probably doesn’t hurt that they will know that he composed Brandenburg in Bohemia, The Bartered Bride or Dalibor, but that is not so important. What would you like the public to really know about Smetana, what is essential?
It is essential to abandon the traditional interpretation of Smetana, which music education still somewhat adheres to. We put him on the pedestal of the founder of Czech national music without explaining what it actually means from today’s point of view. For most people, he is a mythological figure that we either curse or favor. A good way to get to Smetana is, for example, his diaries, which are now gradually being published. The first parts represent his youth and show him as a man who had an interesting ambitious nature, but at the same time he was troubled by similar problems that plague us today.
If we take the basic biographical clichés, Smetana was a classic child prodigy who knew notes at four, mastered the violin and piano at five, and played his first concert at six. At the same time, he was the eleventh child and the first son ever, how did that affect him?
He certainly had a privileged position as the first surviving son in the family, which is of course also related to the contemporary setting of society. He received a good long-term education, although he did not always achieve success in it, especially at the gymnasium. He was undoubtedly at an advantage over his siblings. But his musical talent was truly indisputable and so was his diligence.
What kind of person was he? As far as I know, he pursued a musical career against his brewer father, who wanted him to continue his craft. If I add to this his will to continue composing at the end of his life, despite being deaf, it seems to me that he had a rather stubborn nature. How do you see it?
I think he was definitely a very fierce person. He got his way, even if it meant hurting those close to him. Typically for his wife Katerina, whom he sacrificed a little for his career, I mean his stay in Sweden and her illness (Kateřina died during the lengthy return to Bohemia – editor’s note). I think that at the same time he was also very capable of playing a kind of political game, regarding for example his involvement in the Provisional Theater in Prague. He used tactics to get the desired position because he felt (and certainly true) that he was better suited for it than those who held it at the time, he was simply able to skillfully arrange it, at least before his fateful deafness.
A Czech who learned Czech
You mentioned Sweden, Smetana worked in Sweden for several years Gothenburgua had a great reputation there as a conductor and choirmaster. Can we trace any “Nordic” influences in his music?
Certainly. Specifically, it is the symphonic poem Hakon Jarl based on a legend from Norwegian history and then the piano piece On the Seashore, which is really inspired by Smetana’s stay in Sweden. However, those influences are local, they are fixed for a specific time and did not continue in his work.
The portrait of Bedřich Smetana by the Swedish painter Geskel Saloman dates from 1854. | Photo: Profimedia.cz
Smetana returned home thanks to the social relaxation that, to put it simply, brought more autonomy to the Czechs. Although he himself grew up in a family where Czech was spoken, he completed most of his education in German and then actually had to brush up on that Czech, both in spoken and written form. Who actually awakened his Czech patriotism in him?
Already during his high school studies, he was in contact with personalities of Czech cultural life, such as Karel Havlíček Borovský or Josef Jungmann, who was his teacher at the Prague high school. Smetana then identified with the ideas of Czech emancipation, especially at the time of the revolution in 1848. At the same time, I think that there was a kind of rooted love for the homeland, as for the country in which he was born. Simply to the territory to which he wanted so much to return from Sweden.
Smetana is spoken of as a progressive artist who tried to shape Czech music, but at the same time his contemporaries criticized him for composing under German influences. So how was it with him?
As for accusations of Germanness and so-called Wagnerianism, it was a lot of wordplay and also politics – Smetana was close to the Young Bohemians, while his critics belonged to the conservative Old Bohemians. However, I think that the mentioned progressiveness and the German influence are not mutually exclusive, because Smetana, for example, was very fond of Ferenc Liszt, who can also be classified as a German school. And Liszt was very progressive in musical style. At that time, Smetana applied these state-of-the-art achievements to the Czech content, or rather to the Czech cultural mission that he took as his own.
The frequent accusation that Smetana’s operas are Wagnerian has no real basis. Critics simply sometimes missed a certain simplicity of national music in his work. Whenever they saw some complex harmony or complex structure, which Smetana really often used, they called it Germanness or foreignness, which has nothing to do with Czech national music. They associated it with the national song and its simplicity.
Personally, listening to Smetana’s most famous melodies always moves me in some way. The opening song of the choir, Why would we not look forward to The Sold Bride, lifts my spirits, Vltava from My Homeland is sure to move me again. Is it possible to somehow define the means by which Smetana achieved this, is it his specific talent or can we presumptuously say that he perfectly mastered something specifically Czech?
When we talk about Smetana’s “Czechness” in his music, which still somehow touches us, it is interesting that he never actually slipped into some banal patriotism. The patriotic orientation in his work was always informed by the environment of European intellectual music. Má vlast, for example, is formally a brilliantly written composition. In short, it is perfectly timed, innovative and superbly orchestrated. At the same time, his melodies are often based on Czech folk music, but at the same time they do not remain a banal imitation of it, they move it higher in a creative way. Smetana was very creative and I really think the answer to your question is that he never slipped into pathos, kitsch and banality.
So he took the simplicity and closeness of folk music and transformed it into a complex composition…
He made her into something complex. He did not quote folk songs directly, and critics blamed him for that too. They wanted him to come out directly from the quotations of the folk songs, but he was not close to it also because he had a very complex musical perception and it probably didn’t quite fit with that.
Vltava from the symphonic poem Má vlast. | Video: Petr Kořínek
Composing in silence
For the last ten years he composed in complete deafness, in silence I think at least part of My Homeland was created. How is it possible to imagine music only in your mind and write such a complex symphonic poem?
Smetana undoubtedly had a huge imagination, I don’t really know how he did it. Somehow he managed to transfer that musical imagination to the score. The fact that he had immense experience and mastered his craft very precisely played a big role in this. Although I must say that in the last year or two of his life, his illness manifested itself in a destructive way even for his talent, which began to take a strange direction. It seems to me that he hasn’t been able to control himself that much in recent years. Already in music, he reached into special spheres that we often cannot understand today, let alone people in Smetana’s time.
What song should one play to hear those strange spheres there?
I recommend the orchestral piece Prague Carnival, that is a typical example.
Is it true that the basic motif of Vyšehrad was created from the tones that probably kept ringing in his ear due to tinnitus?
I can’t confirm that for you. But Smetana had tinnitus on high E, and he used it in the string quartet From my Life; there’s a moment where this very high note suddenly drops into the melody.
Why did Dvořák succeed under the humny and Smetana (yet) not so much
Why was Bedřich Smetana not as successful in the world as Antonín Dvořák? Of course, he did not compose Novosvěstka, but for us they are two comparable giants, but for what reason do they not resonate the same today?
This is a very difficult question, we cannot see into the heads of all foreign performers. Smetana is mainly recorded as an opera composer, and all eight of his completed operas are strongly connected with Czech culture, history and humor. For us, these components are understandable, but they are difficult to transfer to completely different cultural areas.
Ceremonial presentation of the 200 CZK commemorative silver coin of the Czech National Bank, commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, February 28 | Photo: Economia
I think Smetana is a bit unlucky in that he didn’t leave behind as big an orchestral work as Dvořák. He has nine symphonies, three concertos and a number of other orchestral compositions, while Smetana left behind My Fatherland, which is his most performed work abroad, and then he composed the Triumphal Symphony, which he composed for the wedding of Emperor Francis Joseph to Elizabeth of Bavaria. However, the symphony was not even performed on this occasion and it is such a curiosity that many tried to forget as quickly as possible for many years afterwards.
In my opinion, the great potential to export Smetana abroad lies in his chamber work. These are his two string quartets and a piano trio, which he wrote in the 1950s and which earned him, for example, the recognition of Ferenc Liszt. But even the aforementioned string quartets are exceptionally high-quality chamber works, which are Czech in expression and at the same time can appeal to foreign audiences as well.
What can Smetana actually address us today? What is still valid in his work that makes us still like him?
We like, for example, the Smetana of My Country, because we all know it, the Vltava is close to everyone, we adopted it as our own and it has not become old. Even thanks to the fact that it is still being played at Prague Spring, the annual interpretation of this cycle of symphonic poems brings something new, as it is also performed by foreign ensembles. Almost always, when I hear My Homeland performed by a foreign orchestra, it brings a fresh perspective that reveals its previously hidden qualities.
Smetana was also an excellent opera composer because he had a great sense for the musical dramaturgy of the opera and for timing. His operas do not need to be shortened and cuts are made in them, which is exceptional nowadays. Even in this, Smetana is actually modern. His music never gets boring, because you can always find something new in it, it manages to be both popular and intellectual at the same time, it uses familiar melodic turns and complex formal elements – and it all works together.
2024-03-02 12:33:23
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