![]() ![]() His 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. His contributions to Czech music were increasingly recognised and honoured, but a mental collapse early in 1884 led to his incarceration in an asylum and subsequent death. ![]() This opposition interfered with his creative work, and may have hastened a decline in health that precipitated his resignation from the theatre in 1874.īy the end of 1874, Smetana had become completely deaf but, freed from his theatre duties and the related controversies, he began a period of sustained composition that continued for almost the rest of his life. Factions within the city's musical establishment considered his identification with the progressive ideas of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner inimical to the development of a distinctively Czech opera style. In that same year, Smetana became the theatre's principal conductor, but the years of his conductorship were marked by controversy. In 1866 his first two operas, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride, were premiered at Prague's new Provisional Theatre, the latter achieving great popularity. He threw himself into the musical life of the city, primarily as a champion of the new genre of Czech opera. In the early 1860s, a more liberal political climate in Bohemia encouraged Smetana to return permanently to Prague. After failing to establish his career in Prague, he left for Sweden, where he set up as a teacher and choirmaster in Gothenburg, and began to write large-scale orchestral works. His first nationalistic music was written during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participated. After conventional schooling, he studied music under Josef Proksch in Prague. Smetana was naturally gifted as a composer, and gave his first public performance at the age of six. It contains the famous symphonic poem " Vltava", also popularly known by its German name "Die Moldau" (in English, "The Moldau"). Internationally he is best known for his 1866 opera The Bartered Bride and for the symphonic cycle Má vlast ("My Fatherland"), which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer's native Bohemia. He has been regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Bedřich Smetana ( / ˌ b ɛ d ər ʒ ɪ x ˈ s m ɛ t ə n ə/ BED-ər-zhikh SMET-ə-nə, Czech: ( listen) 2 March 1824 – ) was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style that became closely identified with his people's aspirations to a cultural and political "revival". ![]()
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