POSTED AUG 17, 2021
Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) and Antonín Dvořák (1841 - 1904) are two of the most famous Czech classical composers. Reflecting the nationalist sentiments of the nineteenth century, both used elements of Czech folk music and folk tales in their compositions. Particularly well suited for this blend of music and folk lore is the symphonic or tone poem* - orchestral music which evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other non-musical source. Composer Franz Liszt is credited with inventing the form, which remained popular from the Romantic Era through the 1920's.
Despite their nationalist sentiments, Smetana and Dvořák lived out their days with Czechs still under the rule of the Austrian Empire, and neither lived to see the formation of the republic of Czechoslovakia after World War I.
Bedřich Smetana [1, 2, 3]
Bedřich Smetana wrote his first "national" music during the failed 1848 Prague Uprising. After a number of personal losses and professional setbacks, he left Prague for Gothenburg in 1856, where he stayed five years. Smetana returned to Prague after it was announced that a National Theater would be built there, as a home for Czech opera. Smetana saw this as an opportunity to write and stage opera that would reflect the Czech national character.
Smetana would compose eight operas which became the bedrock of the Czech opera repertory. Of these, only The Bartered Bride [overture is below left] is performed regularly outside the composer's homeland. This was Smetana's second opera and was hailed as a turning point in Czech musical history, not only acclaimed as founding a novel yet genuine Czech musical style but the first Czech work to enter the international repertoire. The opera "bursts with characteristic dances and folk-tinged melody. As commentator Milton Cross noted, it's 'a rich slice of Bohemian village life, with an ingratiating, ingenuous quality of a folk tale, the entire score seeming to spring from the very bosom of his country.' "
In spite of his failing health and increasing deafness, Smetana continued to compose, completing his great symphonic poem cycle Má vlast ("my homeland") in 1879. It is a set of six symphonic poems, conceived by Smetana as individual works, but often presented and recorded as a single work in six movements. Má vlast is a powerful work with the individual poems evoking the Czech landscape and history as well as legends and fables.
Its popularity is due mainly to the second symphonic poem, "Vltava", which is sometimes known by its German name, "Die Moldau". The piece is a beautiful, evocative musical painting of the rolling river that passes through the city of Prague. Classic FM suggests we listen to "the ebbing and flowing woodwind passages dancing alongside the persistent, driving strings, creating a wonderful sense of movement along various parts of the river. During the journey we encounter a hunt, a wedding party and even some water nymphs." [Complete work is below right; Vltava is at 14:57]
In expanding the symphonic poem form to a cycle, Smetana created what musicologist Hugh Macdonald terms "a monument of Czech music." It would inspire his younger contemporaries in the Czech lands and Slovakia to create "a profusion of symphonic poems."
Antonín Dvořák [1, 4, 5 , 6]
One of Smetana's "younger contemporaries" inspired to create cycles of symphonic poems was Antonín Dvořák. He is better known for his symphonies, which rank among the greatest orchestral works ever composed. Unlike Smetana, Dvořák achieved global recognition fairly early in his career, culminating in an appointment as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City and a commission from the New York Philharmonic to write Symphony No. 9, From the New World**. The "New World Symphony" premiered "to tumultuous applause. Musicologist John Clapham writes that 'without question this was one of the greatest triumphs, and very possibly the greatest triumph of all that Dvořák experienced' in his life, and when the Symphony was published it was 'seized on by conductors and orchestras' all over the world."
Like Smetana, Dvořák composed operas. In an interview shortly before his death, he claimed that opera was 'the most suitable form for the nation'. Like Smetana, just one of his operas, Rusalka, is performed with any regularity outside of his native land. Considered Dvořák's greatest opera, the work is based on a well-known fairy tale about a water nymph who falls in love with a human. It combines a distinctively Czech national flavor in its folk-tunes and dances, with a more universal, late-Romantic musical aesthetic, heavily influenced by Wagner. A performance of Rusalka's "Song to the Moon" is linked below left.
Dvořák wrote two groups of symphonic poems, which date from the 1890s.
The first group*** written in 1891-2 forms a cycle similar to Má vlast, with a single musical theme running through all three pieces. "In Nature's Realm" [link below center] is the first part ("Nature") of a "Nature, Life and Love" trilogy. The other two parts of the trilogy are the "Carnival Overture" ("Life"), and "Othello" ("Love"). Although all three pieces reflect Dvořák’s deep reverence for nature, the brightly melodic "In Nature’s Realm" most "closely resembles a landscape painting in its richness of color; evocation of place; and sense of grand, unfolding vistas. It also is a self-portrait in a sense, for it depicts the composer’s home in the forest of Vysoká, where he could compose in peace, disturbed only by the natural sounds outside his window."
Dvořák composed his second group of symphonic poems shortly after the resounding success of his "New World Symphony." The five poems were first performed between 1896 and 1898. Four of them—"The Water Goblin", "The Noon Witch", "The Golden Spinning Wheel" and "The Wild Dove"— are based on poems from Karel Jaromír Erben's collection of fairy tales.
"The Golden Spinning Wheel" is the story of a young king, a beautiful village maiden, a wicked step-mother and step-sister, a treacherous murder, a mysterious old man, magic water, and a spinning wheel that reveals the crime. Dvořák composed the thematic material by closely following the rhythm of Erben’s verse, precisely characterizing the moods of individual points in the plot, from the tragic and dramatic to the scene of the wedding festivities. Besides using certain instruments for certain characters, he also follows Liszt's and Smetana's example of thematic transformation, metamorphosing the king's theme in "The Golden Spinning Wheel" to represent the wicked stepmother and also the mysterious, kindly old man found in the tale. It's as if Dvořák was trying to tell the story using a film score without visuals. [link below right]
The fifth symphonic poem of the second cycle, "A Hero's Song", was Dvořák's last orchestral work. It is his only symphonic poem without a detailed program of accompanying text, and some have speculated that it is autobiographical. It is also the last instance of him writing purely instrumental music, as he dedicated himself to vocal and operatic works after its completion.
Notes:
*The German term Tondichtung (tone poem) appears to have been first used by the composer Carl Loewe in 1828. The Hungarian composer Franz Liszt first applied the term Symphonische Dichtung to his 13 works in this vein.
**Dvořák's main goal in America was to discover "American Music" and engage in it, much as he had used Czech folk idioms within his music. Shortly after his arrival in America in 1892, Dvořák wrote a series of newspaper articles reflecting on the state of American music. He supported the concept that African-American and Native American music should be used as a foundation for the growth of American music. He felt that through the music of Native Americans and African-Americans, Americans would find their own national style of music. [1]
***Dvorak's first group of symphonic poems is also referred to as overtures by some music writers.
Sources: [1] Wikipedia [2] Classical Notes [3] Classic FM [4] Glindebourne [5] Chicago Symphony Orchestra Program Notes [6] AntonínDvořák.cz