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Biography of Bedrich Smetana
Name: Bedrich Smetana
Birth Date: March 2, 1824
Death Date: May 12, 1884
Place of Birth: Leito-mischel, Czechoslovakia
Nationality: Czech
Gender: Male
Occupations: composer
Bedrich Smetana
The Czech composer Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884), founder of Bohemian national music, is most known for his symphonic poems and operas. His music combines a strong symphonic technique with melodic and rhythmic ideas derived from Bohemian folk traditions.Born into a large family in the small town of Leito-mischel, Bedrich Smetana showed exceptional musical talent as a child, performing on the violin and piano at the age of 5 and writing his first compositions at 8. Despite his father's opposition to his musical training, he quickly gained a reputation as a pianist through his performances of the works of Franz Liszt. After moving to Prague in 1844, Smetana became music teacher to the family of the wealthy Count Thun but left after 4 years. With the help of Liszt, Smetana founded his own piano school.In 1856 Smetana accepted a position as conductor of the Philharmonic Society of Göteborg, Sweden. While there he wrote his …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…are The Moldau (1874) and From Bohemia's Meadows and Forests (1875). In 1876 he completed his most important chamber work, the string quartet From My Life. This composition is unique in the repertoire because of its autobiographical subject matter, reflected in the harrowing screech in the high violin that interupts the dance in the last movement, representing Smetana's own physical disability. In the spring of 1884 he was committed to a mental institution, where he died a few months later. Further Reading Two important biographies of Smetana are Liam Nolan and Joseph Bernard Hutton, The Life of Smetana: The Pain and the Glory (1968), and Brian Large, Smetana (1970), the last of which contains musical analysis as well as biographical material. For general background see Donald Jay Grout, A History of Western Music (1960), and Kenneth B. Klaus, The Romantic Period in Music (1970).Large, Brian, Smetana, New York: Da Capo Press, 1985. Maly, Miloslav, Bedrich Smetana, Prague: Orbis, 1976.
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