Montage of great classical music composers. From left to right:
Top row – Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven;
second row – Gioachino Rossini, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi;
third row – Johann Strauss II, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák;
bottom row – Edvard Grieg, Edward Elgar, Sergei Rachmaninoff, George Gershwin, Aram Khachaturian

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times.^[1] The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period. It should not be confused with the Classical Era.

European music is largely distinguished from many other non-European and popular musical forms by its system of staff notation, in use since about the 16th century.^[2] Western staff notation is used by composers to prescribe to the performer the pitch, speed, meter, individual rhythms and exact execution of a piece of music. This leaves less room for practices such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, that are frequently heard in non-European art music and popular music.^[3][4][5]

The term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to "canonize" the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Beethoven as a golden age.^[6] The earliest reference to "classical music" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836.^[1][7]

Characteristics[link]

Given the extremely broad variety of forms, styles, genres, and historical periods generally perceived as being described by the term "classical music," it is difficult to list characteristics that can be attributed to all works of that type. Vague descriptions are plentiful, such as describing classical music as anything that "lasts a long time," a statement made rather moot when one considers contemporary composers who are described as classical; or music that has certain instruments like violins, which are also found in other genres. However, there are characteristics that classical music contains that few or no other genres of music contain.^{[examples needed][8]}

Literature[link]

The most outstanding and particular characteristic of classical music is that the repertoire tends to be written down. Composers and performers alike are typically highly literate in understanding notation. The written quality of the music has, in addition to preserving the works, led to a high level of complexity within them.

Instrumentation[link]

The Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra performs Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.

The instruments used in most classical music were largely invented before the mid-19th century (often much earlier), and codified in the 18th and 19th centuries. They consist of the instruments found in an orchestra, together with a few other solo instruments (such as the piano, harpsichord, and organ). The symphony orchestra is the most widely known medium for classical music.^[9] The orchestra includes members of the string, woodwind, brass, and percussion families.

Electric instruments such as the electric guitar appear occasionally in the classical music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Both classical and popular musicians have experimented in recent decades with electronic instruments such as the synthesizer, electric and digital techniques such as the use of sampled or computer-generated sounds, and the sounds of instruments from other cultures such as the gamelan.

None of the bass instruments existed until the Renaissance. In Medieval music, instruments are divided in two categories: loud instruments for use outdoors or in church, and quieter instruments for indoor use. The Baroque orchestra consisted of flutes, oboes, horns and violins, occasionally with trumpets and timpani.^[9] Many instruments which are associated today with popular music used to have important roles in early classical music, such as bagpipes, vihuelas, hurdy-gurdies and some woodwind instruments. On the other hand, instruments such as the acoustic guitar, which used to be associated mainly with popular music, have gained prominence in classical music through the 19th and 20th centuries.

While equal temperament became gradually accepted as the dominant musical temperament during the 18th century, different historical temperaments are often used for music from earlier periods. For instance, music of the English Renaissance is often performed in meantone temperament. Keyboards almost all share a common layout (often called the piano keyboard).

Form[link]

Whereas the majority of popular styles lend themselves to the song form, classical music can also take on the form of the concerto, symphony, sonata, opera, dance music, suite, étude, symphonic poem, and others.

Classical composers often aspire to imbue their music with a very complex relationship between its affective (emotional) content and the intellectual means by which it is achieved. Many of the most esteemed works of classical music make use of musical development, the process by which a musical idea or motif is repeated in different contexts or in altered form. The sonata form and fugue employ rigorous forms of musical development.

Technical execution[link]

Along with a desire for composers to attain high technical achievement in writing their music, performers of classical music are faced with similar goals of technical mastery, as demonstrated by the proportionately high amount of schooling and private study most successful classical musicians have had when compared to "popular" genre musicians, and the large number of secondary schools, including conservatories, dedicated to the study of classical music. The only other genre in the Western world with comparable secondary education opportunities is jazz.

Complexity[link]

Performance of classical music repertoire demands a significant level of technical mastery on the part of the musician; proficiency in sight-reading and ensemble playing, thorough understanding of tonal and harmonic principles, knowledge of performance practice, and a familiarity with the style/musical idiom inherent to a given period, composer or musical work are among the most essential of skills for the classically trained musician.

Works of classical repertoire often exhibit artistic complexity through the use of thematic development, phrasing, harmonization, modulation (change of key), texture, and, of course, musical form itself. Larger-scale compositional forms (such as that of the symphony, concerto, opera or oratorio, for example) usually represent a hierarchy of smaller units consisting of phrases, periods, sections, and movements. Musical analysis of a composition aims at achieving greater understanding of it, leading to more meaningful hearing and a greater appreciation of the composer's style.

Society[link]

Classical music regularly features as background music for movies, television programmes, advertisements and events. Nessun dorma from Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot for example was the theme tune for the 1990 FIFA World Cup.

History[link]

The major time divisions of classical music are the early music period, which includes Medieval (500–1400) and Renaissance (1400–1600), the Common practice period, which includes the Baroque (1600–1750), Classical (1750–1830) and Romantic (1804–1949) periods, and the modern and contemporary period, which includes 20th century (1900–2000) and contemporary (1975–current).

The dates are generalizations, since the periods overlapped and the categories are somewhat arbitrary. For example, the use of counterpoint and fugue, which is considered characteristic of the Baroque era, was continued by Haydn, who is classified as typical of the Classical period. Beethoven, who is often described as a founder of the Romantic period, and Brahms, who is classified as Romantic, also used counterpoint and fugue, but other characteristics of their music define their period.

The prefix neo is used to describe a 20th century or contemporary composition written in the style of an earlier period, such as Classical or Romantic. Stravinsky's Pulcinella, for example, is a neoclassical composition because it is stylistically similar to works of the Classical period.

Roots[link]

The roots of Western classical music lie in early Christian liturgical music, and its influences date back to the Ancient Greeks. Development of individual tones and scales was done by ancient Greeks such as Aristoxenus and Pythagoras.^[10] Pythagoras created a tuning system and helped to codify musical notation. Ancient Greek instruments such as the aulos (a reed instrument) and the lyre (a stringed instrument similar to a small harp) eventually led to the modern-day instruments of a classical orchestra.^[11] The antecedent to the early period was the era of ancient music from before the fall of the Roman Empire (476 AD). Very little music survives from this time, most of it from Ancient Greece.

Early period[link]

A musician plays the vielle in a fourteenth-century Medieval manuscript.

The chanson Belle, bonne, sage by Baude Cordier, an ars subtilior piece included in the Chantilly Codex.

Johannes Ockeghem, Kyrie "Au travail suis," excerpt.

The Medieval period includes music from after the fall of Rome to about 1400. Monophonic chant, also called plainsong or Gregorian Chant, was the dominant form until about 1100.^[12] Polyphonic (multi-voiced) music developed from monophonic chant throughout the late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, including the more complex voicings of motets. The Renaissance period was from 1400 to 1600. It was characterized by greater use of instrumentation, multiple interweaving melodic lines, and the use of the first bass instruments. Social dancing became more widespread, so musical forms appropriate to accompanying dance began to standardize.

It is in this time that the notation of music on a staff and other elements of musical notation began to take shape.^[13] This invention made possible the separation of the composition of a piece of music from its transmission; without written music, transmission was oral, and subject to change every time it was transmitted. With a musical score, a work of music could be performed without the composer's presence.^[12] The invention of the movable-type printing press in the 15th century had far-reaching consequences on the preservation and transmission of music.^[14]

Typical stringed instruments of the Early Period include the harp, lute, vielle, and psaltery, while wind instruments included the flute family (including recorder), shawm (an early member of the oboe family), trumpet, and the bagpipe. Simple pipe organs existed, but were largely confined to churches, although there were portable varieties.^[15] Later in the period, early versions of keyboard instruments like the clavichord and harpsichord began to appear. Stringed instruments such as the viol had emerged by the 16th century, as had a wider variety of brass and reed instruments. Printing enabled the standardization of descriptions and specifications of instruments, as well as instruction in their use.^[16]

Common practice period[link]

The common practice period is when many of the ideas that make up western classical music took shape, standardized, or were codified. It began with the Baroque era, running from roughly 1600 to the middle of the 18th century. The Classical era followed, ending roughly around 1820. The Romantic era ran through the 19th century, ending about 1910.

Baroque music[link]

Baroque instruments including hurdy gurdy, harpsichord, bass viol, lute, violin, and baroque guitar.

Baroque music is characterized by the use of complex tonal counterpoint and the use of a basso continuo, a continuous bass line. Music became more complex in comparison with the songs of earlier periods.^[9] The beginnings of the sonata form took shape in the canzona, as did a more formalized notion of theme and variations. The tonalities of major and minor as means for managing dissonance and chromaticism in music took full shape.^[17]

During the Baroque era, keyboard music played on the harpsichord and pipe organ became increasingly popular, and the violin family of stringed instruments took the form generally seen today. Opera as a staged musical drama began to differentiate itself from earlier musical and dramatic forms, and vocal forms like the cantata and oratorio became more common.^[18] Vocalists began adding embellishments to melodies.^[9] Instrumental ensembles began to distinguish and standardize by size, giving rise to the early orchestra for larger ensembles, with chamber music being written for smaller groups of instruments where parts are played by individual (instead of massed) instruments. The concerto as a vehicle for solo performance accompanied by an orchestra became widespread, although the relationship between soloist and orchestra was relatively simple. The theories surrounding equal temperament began to be put in wider practice, especially as it enabled a wider range of chromatic possibilities in hard-to-tune keyboard instruments. Although Bach did not use equal temperament, as a modern piano is generally tuned, changes in the temperaments from the meantone system, common at the time, to various temperaments that made modulation between all keys musically acceptable, made possible Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.^[19]

Classical period music[link]

Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) ca. 1770.

The Classical period, from about 1750 to 1820, established many of the norms of composition, presentation, and style, and was also when the piano became the predominant keyboard instrument. The basic forces required for an orchestra became somewhat standardized (although they would grow as the potential of a wider array of instruments was developed in the following centuries). Chamber music grew to include ensembles with as many as 8–10 performers for serenades. Opera continued to develop, with regional styles in Italy, France, and German-speaking lands. The opera buffa, a form of comic opera, rose in popularity. The symphony came into its own as a musical form, and the concerto was developed as a vehicle for displays of virtuoso playing skill. Orchestras no longer required a harpsichord (which had been part of the traditional continuo in the Baroque style), and were often led by the lead violinist (now called the concertmaster).^[20]

Wind instruments became more refined in the Classical period. While double reeded instruments like the oboe and bassoon became somewhat standardized in the Baroque, the clarinet family of single reeds was not widely used until Mozart expanded its role in orchestral, chamber, and concerto settings.

Romantic era music[link]

The music of the Romantic era, from roughly the first decade of the 19th century to the middle 20th century, was characterized by increased attention to an extended melodic line, as well as expressive and emotional elements, paralleling romanticism in other art forms. Musical forms began to break from the Classical era forms (even as those were being codified), with free-form pieces like nocturnes, fantasias, and preludes being written where accepted ideas about the exposition and development of themes were ignored or minimized.^[21] The music became more chromatic, dissonant, and tonally colorful, with tensions (with respect to accepted norms of the older forms) about key signatures increasing.^[22] The art song (or Lied) came to maturity in this era, as did the epic scales of grand opera, ultimately transcended by Richard Wagner's Ring cycle.^[23]

In the 19th century, musical institutions emerged from the control of wealthy patrons, as composers and musicians could construct lives independent of the nobility. Increasing interest in music by the growing middle classes throughout western Europe spurred the creation of organizations for the teaching, performance, and preservation of music. The piano, which achieved its modern construction in this era (in part due to industrial advances in metallurgy) became widely popular with the middle class, whose demands for the instrument spurred a large number of piano builders. Many symphony orchestras date their founding to this era.^[22] Some musicians and composers were the stars of the day; some, like Franz Liszt and Niccolò Paganini, fulfilled both roles.^[24]

The family of instruments used, especially in orchestras, grew. A wider array of percussion instruments began to appear. Brass instruments took on larger roles, as the introduction of rotary valves made it possible for them to play a wider range of notes. The size of the orchestra (typically around 40 in the Classical era) grew to be over 100.^[22] Gustav Mahler's 1906 Symphony No. 8, for example, has been performed with over 150 instrumentalists and choirs of over 400.

European cultural ideas and institutions began to follow colonial expansion into other parts of the world. There was also a rise, especially toward the end of the era, of nationalism in music (echoing, in some cases, political sentiments of the time), as composers such as Edvard Grieg, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Antonín Dvořák echoed traditional music of their homelands in their compositions.^[25]

20th-century, modern, and contemporary music[link]

Modernism (1905–1985) marked a period when many composers rejected certain values of the common practice period, such as traditional tonality, melody, instrumentation, and structure. Composers, academics, and musicians developed extensions of music theory and technique.^{[citation needed]} 20th century classical music, encompassing a wide variety of post-Romantic styles composed through the year 1999, includes late Romantic, Modern and Postmodern styles of composition. The term "contemporary music" is sometimes used to describe music composed in the late 20th century through to the present day.

Significance of written notation[link]

Modernist view of the significance of the score[link]

The modernist views hold that Classical music is considered primarily a written musical tradition, preserved in music notation, as opposed to being transmitted orally, by rote, or by recordings of particular performances. While there are differences between particular performances of a classical work, a piece of classical music is generally held to transcend any interpretation of it. The use of musical notation is an effective method for transmitting classical music, since the written music contains the technical instructions for performing the work. The written score, however, does not usually contain explicit instructions as to how to interpret the piece in terms of production or performance, apart from directions for dynamics, tempo and expression (to a certain extent). This is left to the discretion of the performers, who are guided by their personal experience and musical education, their knowledge of the work's idiom, their personal artistic tastes, and the accumulated body of historic performance practices.

Criticism of the modernist view[link]

Some critics express the opinion that it is only from the mid 19th century, and especially in the 20th century, that the score began to hold such a high significance. Previously, improvisation, rhythmic flexibility, improvisatory deviation from the score and oral tradition of playing was integral to style of music. Yet in the 20th century, this oral tradition and passing on of stylistic features within classical music disappeared. Instead, musicians use the score to play music, yet even given the score, there is considerable controversy about how to perform the works. Some of this controversy relates to the fact that this score-centric approach has led to performing styles that emphasize metrically strict block-rhythms (just as the music is notated in the score).

Some quotes that highlight this criticism of modernist overvaluing of the score:

• [...] one of the most stubborn modern misconceptions concerning baroque music is that a metronomic regularity was intended (Baroque Interpretation in Grove 5th edition by Robert Donington)
• [...] The history of this particular idea is littered with dead ends and failed projects. It is high time these misconceptions are addressed with academic rigour. History of Metaphysics by Andrew Pyle
• Too many teachers, conditioned to 20th Century ideas, teach Bach and other Baroque music exactly the wrong way. This leads to what musicologist Sol Babitz calls "sewing machine Bach."^[26]
• [...] tendency to look alike, sound alike and think alike. The conservatories are at fault and they have been at fault for many years now. Any sensitive musician going around the World has noted the same thing. The conservatories, from Moscow and Leningrad to Juilliard, Curtis and Indiana, are producing a standardized product.
  [...] clarity, undeviating rhythm, easy technique, "musicianship". I put the word musicianship in quotes, because as often as not, it is a false kind of musicianship – a musicianship that sees the tree and not the forest, that takes care of the detail but ignores the big picture; a musicianship that is tied to the printed note rather than to emotional meaning of a piece.
  The fact remains that there is a dreadful uniformity today and also an appalling lack of knowledge about the culture and performance traditions of the past. (Music Schools Turning out Robots?^[26] by Harold C. Schonberg)

Improvisation[link]

Improvisation once played an important role in classical music. A remnant of this improvisatory tradition in classical music can be heard in the cadenza, a passage found mostly in concertos and solo works, designed to allow skilled performers to exhibit their virtuoso skills on the instrument. Traditionally this was improvised by the performer; however, it is often written for (or occasionally by) the performer beforehand. Improvisation is also an important aspect in authentic performances of operas of Baroque era and of bel canto (especially operas of Vincenzo Bellini), and is best exemplified by the da capo aria, a form by which famous singers typically perform variations of the thematic matter of the aria in the recapitulation section ('B section' / the 'da capo' part). An example is Beverly Sills' complex, albeit pre-written, variation of Da tempeste il legno infranto from Händel's Giulio Cesare.

Its written transmission, along with the veneration bestowed on certain classical works, has led to the expectation that performers will play a work in a way that realizes in detail the original intentions of the composer. During the 19th century the details that composers put in their scores generally increased. Yet the opposite trend – admiration of performers for new "interpretations" of the composer's work – can be seen, and it is not unknown for a composer to praise a performer for achieving a better realization of the original intent than the composer was able to imagine. Thus, classical performers often achieve very high reputations for their musicianship, even if they do not compose themselves. Generally however, it is the composers who are remembered more than the performers.

The primacy of the composer's written score has also led, today, to a relatively minor role played by improvisation in classical music, in sharp contrast to the practice of musicians who lived during the baroque, classical and romantic era. Improvisation in classical music performance was common during both the Baroque era and in the nineteenth, yet lessened strongly during the 2nd half of the 19th and in the 20th centuries. Recently the performance of such music by modern classical musicians has been enriched by a revival of the old improvisational practices. During the classical period, Mozart and Beethoven often improvised the cadenzas to their piano concertos (and thereby encouraged others to do so), but they also provided written cadenzas for use by other soloists. In opera, the practice of singing strictly by the score i.e. come scritto, is famously propagated by Maria Callas, who called this practice 'straitjacketing' and implied that it allows the intention of the composer to be understood better, especially during studying the music for the first time.

Relationship to other music traditions[link]

Popular music[link]

Classical music has often incorporated elements or material from popular music of the composer's time. Examples include occasional music such as Brahms' use of student drinking songs in his Academic Festival Overture, genres exemplified by Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera, and the influence of jazz on early- and mid-20th century composers including Maurice Ravel, exemplified by the movement entitled "Blues" in his sonata for violin and piano.^[27] Certain postmodern, minimalist and postminimalist classical composers acknowledge a debt to popular music.^[28]

There are numerous examples of influence in the opposite direction, including popular songs based on classical music, the use to which Pachelbel's Canon has been put since the 1970s, and the musical crossover phenomenon, where classical musicians have achieved success in the popular music arena.^[29]

Folk music[link]

Composers of classical music have often made use of folk music (music created by musicians who are commonly not classically trained, often from a purely oral tradition). Some composers, like Dvořák and Smetana,^[30] have used folk themes to impart a nationalist flavor to their work, while others (like Bartók) have used specific themes lifted whole from their folk-music origins.^[31]

Commercialism[link]

Certain staples of classical music are often used commercially (either in advertising or in movie soundtracks). In television commercials, several passages have become clichéd, particularly the opening of Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra (made famous in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the opening section "O Fortuna" of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana; other examples include the Dies Irae from the Verdi Requiem, Edvard Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt, the opening bars of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre, Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee", and excerpts of Aaron Copland's Rodeo. Shawn Vancour argues that the commercialization of classical music in the early 20th century served to harm the music industry through inadequate representation. ^[32]

Similarly, movies and television often revert to standard, clichéd snatches of classical music to convey refinement or opulence: some of the most-often heard pieces in this category include Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain (as orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov), and Rossini's William Tell Overture.

Education[link]

Throughout history, parents have often made sure that their children receive classical music training from a young age. Some parents pursue music lessons for their children for social reasons or in an effort to instill a sense of self-discipline.^{[citation needed]} Some believe that knowledge of important works of classical music is part of a good general education.

During the 1990s, several research papers and popular books wrote on what came to be called the "Mozart effect": an observed temporary, small elevation of scores on certain tests as a result of listening to Mozart's works. The approach has been popularized in a book by Don Campbell, and is based on an experiment published in Nature suggesting that listening to Mozart temporarily boosted students' IQ by 8 to 9 points.^[33] This popularized version of the theory was expressed succinctly by a New York Times music columnist: "researchers... have determined that listening to Mozart actually makes you smarter."^[34] Promoters marketed CDs claimed to induce the effect. Florida passed a law requiring toddlers in state-run schools to listen to classical music every day, and in 1998 the governor of Georgia budgeted $105,000 per year to provide every child born in Georgia with a tape or CD of classical music. One of the co-authors of the original studies of the Mozart effect commented "I don't think it can hurt. I'm all for exposing children to wonderful cultural experiences. But I do think the money could be better spent on music education programs."^[35]

In 1996–1997, a research study was conducted on a large population of middle age students in the Cherry Creek School District in Denver, Colorado, USA. The study showed that students who actively listen to classical music before studying had higher academic scores. The research further indicated that students who listened to the music prior to an examination also had positively elevated achievement scores. Students who listened to rock-and-roll or country had moderately lower scores. The study further indicated that students who used classical during the course of study had a significant leap in their academic performance; whereas, those who listened to other types of music had significantly lowered academic scores. The research was conducted over several schools within the Cherry Creek School District and was conducted through University of Colorado. This study is reflective of several recent studies (i.e. Mike Manthei and Steve N. Kelly of the University of Nebraska at Omaha; Donald A. Hodges and Debra S. O'Connell of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; etc.) and others who had significant results through the discourse of their work.^[36]

See also[link]

Classical music portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Classical music

• List of classical music composers
• List of classical and art music traditions

Nation specific:

• American classical music
• Australian classical music
• Canadian classical music
• French classical music
• Indian classical music
• Iranian classical music
• Italian classical music
• Ottoman classical music
• Russian classical music
• Classical music of the United Kingdom

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Lebrecht, Norman (1996). When the Music Stops: Managers, Maestros and the Corporate Murder of Classical Music. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-01025-6. 
• Grout, Donald Jay (1973). A History of Western Music. Norton. ISBN 0-393-09416-2. 
• Grout, Donald J.; Palisca, Claude V. (1988). A History of Western Music. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-95627-6. 
• Kennedy, Michael (2006), The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 985 pages, ISBN 0-19-861459-4
• Swafford, Jan (1992). The Vintage Guide to Classical Music. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-72805-8. 

Further reading[link]

• Copland, Aaron (1957) What to Listen for in Music; rev. ed. McGraw-Hill. (paperback).
• --"-- (1988) --"--; with an introduction by William Schuman. McGraw-Hill ISBN 0-07-013091-4
• --"-- (2002) --"--; with a foreword and epilogue by Alan Rich; with an introduction by William Schuman. New American Library ISBN 0-451-52867-0 (reissued 2009 with new appreciation by Leonard Slatkin)
• Grout, Donald Jay; Palisca, Claude V. (1996) A History of Western Music, Fifth edition. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-96904-5 (hardcover).
• Hanning, Barbara Russano; Grout, Donald Jay (1998 rev. 2009) Concise History of Western Music. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-92803-9 (hardcover).
• Johnson, Julian (2002) Who Needs Classical Music?: cultural choice and musical value. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514681-6.
• Kamien, Roger (2008) Music: an appreciation; 6th brief ed. McGraw-Hill ISBN 978-0-07-340134-8
• Lihoreau, Tim; Fry, Stephen (2004) Stephen Fry's Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music. Boxtree. ISBN 978-0-7522-2534-0
• Scholes, Percy Alfred; Arnold, Denis (photographer) (1988) The New Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-311316-3 (paperback).
• Taruskin, Richard (2005, rev. Paperback version 2009) Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press (USA). ISBN 978-0-19-516979-9 (Hardback), ISBN 978-0-19-538630-1 (Paperback)
• Sorce Keller, Marcello (2011) What Makes Music European. Looking Beyond Sound. Latham, NJ: Scarecrow Press (USA).

External links[link]

• Historical classical recordings from the British Library Sound Archive (available only to users in the member countries of the European Union)
• Chronological list of recorded classical composers

Benjamin Zander
Benjamin Zander at TED2009
Background information
Genres	Classical Music
Occupations	composer, music director, arranger
Instruments	Cello,
Years active	1980–present
Website	www.benjaminzander.com

Benjamin Zander (born March 9, 1939, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, England) is an American conductor from the United Kingdom.

History[link]

Benjamin Zander was born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, England on March 9, 1939. His parents had emigrated from Berlin in 1937 to escape the Nazis, and raise their four children; Michael, Luke, Angelica, and Benjamin. Benjamin Zander started to compose music at the age of nine. Several of his compositions came to the attention of composer Benjamin Britten, who invited the Zander family to spend three summers in Aldeburgh, England the beautiful seaside village in Suffolk where he lived. Benjamin Zander took lessons with Benjamin Britten and became a student of theory of Britten’s amanuensis and assistant, Imogen Holst, daughter of composer Gustav Holst.

Early life[link]

Benjamin’s main instrument was the cello. He began studying at the age of ten and became the youngest member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at the age of twelve. He went as a boarder to Uppingham, one of England’s leading public schools, as a music scholar at the age of thirteen and then to St. Paul’s School in London so he could continue his cello studies with Herbert Withers. At the age of fifteen Benjamin became a student of the great Spanish cello virtuoso Gaspar Cassadó and moved to Florence and Sienna, Italy for the next three years. He completed his cello studies at the State Conservatoire in Cologne, Germany where he also served as an assistant to Cassadó.

After living abroad for five years Benjamin returned to England and completed his A levels and entered University College London for a degree program in English literature, winning the University-wide English Literature Essay Prize. During his period of study at University he performed regularly as a professional cellist giving recitals and chamber music concerts with the King-Zander-Arieli Trio and teaching at the Yehudi Menuhin School for gifted children.

In 1965 he won a Harkness International Fellowship and traveled to the United States for Graduate work at Brandeis University, Harvard and with Leonard Shure and Ernst Oster in New York.

Personal life[link]

Benjamin and Patricia Zander were married in 1966 and their daughter Jessica was born a few years later. Jessica and her husband David Tomaszewski have two daughters, Maya, born in April 2001 and Vivian, born in April 2003.

Benjamin and Rosamund Stone Zander have been married since 1981. They work closely together on many projects and live separately in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rosamund’s children, Alexandra and Evan Bageris also live in Massachusetts.^[1]

Departure from NEC[link]

Controversially Zander was fired from the New England Conservatory in 2012, where for 45 years he had conducted the youth orchestra. He was accused of hiring a videographer (who had been previously employed by the New England Conservatory for two years) to record concerts and who had (with Zander's knowledge) previously served a prison sentence for sexual assault of a minor.^[2]

References[link]

Interviews[link]

• Interview with Charlie Rose
• Interview with Bruce Sellery
• WGBH Public Television Boston
• TED Talk: Classical music with shining eyes

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Benjamin Zander

• Official site
• Benjamin Zander Profile Page
• Benjamin Zander on music and passion (video)

Portrait of Bedřich Smetana

BedÅ™ich Smetana (Czech pronunciation: [ˈbÉ›drÌ?ɪx ˈsmÉ›tana] ( listen); 2 March 1824 – 12 May 1884) was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style which became closely identified with his country's aspirations to independent statehood. He is thus widely regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his opera The Bartered Bride, for the symphonic cycle Má vlast ("My Fatherland") which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer's native land, and for his First String Quartet From My Life.

Smetana was naturally gifted as a pianist, and gave his first public performance at the age of six. After his conventional schooling, he studied music under Josef Proksch in Prague. His first nationalistic music was written during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participated. 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. During this period of his life Smetana was twice married; of six daughters, three died in infancy.

In the early 1860s, a more liberal political climate in Bohemia encouraged Smetana to return permanently to Prague. He threw himself into the musical life of the city, primarily as a champion of the new genre of Czech opera. 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. In that same year, Smetana became the theatre's principal conductor, but the years of his conductorship were marked by controversy. 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. This opposition interfered with his creative work, and may have hastened the health breakdown which precipitated his resignation from the theatre in 1874.

By 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. 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 his subsequent death. Smetana's 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. However, relatively few of Smetana's works are in the international repertory, and most foreign commentators tend to regard Antonín Dvořák as a more significant Czech composer.

Biography[link]

Family background and childhood[link]

BedÅ™ich Smetana was born as Friedrich Smetana on 2 March 1824, in LitomyÅ¡l, 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 FrantiÅ¡ek Smetana and his third wife Barbora Lynková. FrantiÅ¡ek had fathered eight children in two earlier marriages, five daughters surviving infancy; he and Barbora had ten more children, of whom seven reached adulthood.^[1][2] At this time, under Habsburg rule, German was the official language of Bohemia. FrantiÅ¡ek knew Czech, but for business and social reasons rarely used it, and his children were ignorant of it until much later in their lives.^[3]

Count Waldstein's castle in Smetana's birthplace, Litomyšl, Bohemia

The Smetana family came from the Hradec Králové 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 before coming to Litomyšl in 1823 as brewer to Count Waldstein, whose Renaissance castle dominates the town.^[1][4]

The elder Smetana, although uneducated, had a natural gift for music and was a competent violinist who played in a string quartet.^[5] BedÅ™ich was introduced to music by his father and in October 1830, at the age of six, gave his first public performance. At a concert held in LitomyÅ¡l's Philosophical Academy he played a piano arrangement of Auber's overture to La muette de Portici, to a rapturous reception.^[6][7] In 1831 the family moved to JindÅ™ichův Hradec in the south of Bohemia – the region where, a generation later, Gustav Mahler grew up.^[4][8] 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 (KvapiÄ?ek, or "Little Galop"), survives in sketch form.^[8][9]

In 1835, FrantiÅ¡ek retired to a farm in the south-eastern region of Bohemia.^[9] There being no suitable local school, Smetana was sent to the gymnasium at Jihlava, where he was homesick and unable to study. He then transferred to the Premonstratensian school at NÄ›mecký Brod, where he was happier and made good progress.^[9] Among the friends he made here was the future Czech revolutionary poet Karel HavlíÄ?ek,^[10] whose departure for Prague in 1838 may have influenced Smetana's own desire to experience life in the capital. The following year, with FrantiÅ¡ek'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.^[11]

Apprentice musician[link]

First steps[link]

Smetana arrived in Prague in the autumn of 1839. Finding Jungmann's school uncongenial (he was mocked by his classmates for his country manners),^[11] Smetana 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.^[11] After Liszt gave a series of piano recitals in the city, Smetana became convinced that he would find satisfaction only in a musical career.^[11] He confided to his journal that he wanted "to become a Mozart in composition and a Liszt in technique".^[12][13] However, the Prague idyll ended when František discovered his son's truancy, and removed him from the city.^[11] František at this time saw music as a diverting pastime, not as a career choice.^[3] 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.^[14]

An older cousin, Josef Smetana, a teacher at the Premonstratensian School in Plzeň (Pilsen), then offered to supervise the boy's remaining schooling, and in the summer of 1840 Smetana departed for Plzeň.^[5] 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.^[13] This included a number of romances, the most important of which was with Kateřina Kolářová, whom he had known briefly in his early childhood. Smetana was entirely captivated with her, writing in his journal: "When I am not with her I am sitting on hot coals and have no peace".^[15] He composed several pieces for her, among which are two Quadrilles, a song duet, and an incomplete piano study for the left hand.^[16] He also composed his first orchestral piece, a B-flat minuet.^[17]

Student and teacher[link]

By the time Smetana completed his schooling, his father's fortunes had declined. Although František now agreed that his son should follow a musical career, he could not provide financial support.^[13][16] In August 1843 Smetana departed for Prague with twenty gulden,^[18][19] and no immediate prospects.^[20] Lacking any formal musical training, he needed a teacher, and was introduced by Kateřina Kolářová's mother to Josef Proksch, head of the Prague Music Institute – where Kateřina was now studying.^[5][16] Proksch used the most modern teaching methods, drawing on Beethoven, Chopin, Berlioz and the Leipzig circle of Liszt.^[5] 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.^[5]

For the next three years, besides teaching piano to the Thun children, Smetana studied theory and composition under Proksch. The works he composed in these years include songs, dances, bagatelles, impromptus and the G minor Piano Sonata.^[21] In 1846 Smetana attended concerts given in Prague by Berlioz, and in all likelihood met the French master at a reception arranged by Proksch.^[22] 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.^[5] 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.^[23]

Early career[link]

Revolutionary[link]

Smetana's concert tour to Western Bohemia was poorly supported, so he abandoned it and returned to Prague, where he made a living from private pupils and occasional appearances as an accompanist in chamber concerts.^[22] He also began work on his first major orchestral work, the Overture in D major.^[24]

A depiction of the barricades on the Charles Bridge, Prague, 1848. Smetana was briefly a participant in the uprising.

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 HavlíÄ?ek was urging an end to Habsburg absolutist rule and for more political autonomy.^[25] 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.^[26] 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 member of Svornost, Smetana helped to man the barricades on the Charles Bridge.^[25] The nascent uprising was quickly crushed, but Smetana avoided the imprisonment or exile received by leaders such as HavlíÄ?ek.^[25] During his brief spell with Svornost, he met the writer and leading radical, Karel Sabina, who would later provide libretti for Smetana's first two operas.^[25]

Piano Institute[link]

Early in 1848, Smetana wrote to Franz Liszt, whom he had not yet met, asking him to accept the dedication of a new piano work, Six Characteristic Pieces, and recommend it to a publisher. He also requested a loan of 400 gulden, to enable him to open a music school. Liszt replied cordially, accepting the dedication and promising to help find a publisher, but he offered no financial assistance.^[27][28] This encouragement was the beginning of a friendship that was of great value to Smetana in his subsequent career.^[29] Despite Liszt's lack of financial support, Smetana was able to start a Piano Institute in late August 1848, with twelve students.^[30] After a period of struggle the Institute began to flourish and became briefly fashionable, particularly among supporters of Czech nationalism in whose eyes Smetana was developing a reputation. Proksch wrote of Smetana's support for his people's cause, and said that he "could well become the transformer of my ideas in the Czech language."^[31] In 1849 the Institute was relocated to the home of KateÅ™ina's parents, and began to attract distinguished visitors; Liszt came regularly, and the former emperor Ferdinand, who had settled in Prague, attended the school's matinée concerts.^[31] Smetana's performances in these concerts became a recognised feature of Prague's musical life. In this time of relative financial stability Smetana married KateÅ™ina, on 27 August 1849. Four daughters were born to the couple between 1851 and 1855.^[28]

Budding composer[link]

In 1850, notwithstanding his revolutionary sentiments, Smetana accepted the post of Court Pianist in Ferdinand's establishment in Prague Castle.^[26][31] He continued teaching in the Piano Institute, and devoted himself increasingly to composition. His works, mainly for the piano, included the three-part Wedding Scenes, some of the music of which was later used in The Bartered Bride.^[32] He also wrote numerous short experimental pieces collected under the name Album Leaves, and a series of polkas.^[32] During 1853–54 he worked on a major orchestral piece, the Triumphal Symphony, composed to commemorate the wedding of Emperor Franz Joseph.^[28] The symphony was rejected by the Imperial Court, possibly on the grounds that the brief musical references to the 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.^[33]

Private sorrows and professional disenchantment[link]

An oil portrait of Smetana, 1854

In the years between 1854 and 1856 Smetana suffered a series of personal blows. In July 1854 his second daughter, Gabriela, died of tuberculosis. A year later his eldest daughter BedÅ™iÅ¡ka, who at the age of four was showing signs of musical precocity, died of scarlet fever.^[34] 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.^[5][35] Smetana's sorrows continued; just after BedÅ™iÅ¡ka's death a fourth daughter, KateÅ™ina, had been born but she, too, died in June 1856. By this time Smetana's wife KateÅ™ina had also been diagnosed with tuberculosis.^[34]

In July 1856, Smetana received news of the death in exile of his revolutionary friend Karel HavlíÄ?ek.^[36] The political climate in Prague was a further source of gloom; hopes of a more enlightened government and social reform following Franz Joseph's accession in 1848 had faded as Austrian absolutism reasserted itself under Baron Alexander von Bach.^[36] Despite the good name of the Piano Institute, Smetana's status as a concert pianist was generally considered to be below that of contemporaries such as Alexander Dreyschock.^[36] 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.^[32] 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.^[36] His disenchantment with Prague was growing and, perhaps influenced by Dreyschock's accounts of opportunities to be found 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.^[37]

Years of travel[link]

Gothenburg[link]

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 opportunity "for an impact I could never have achieved in Prague."^[37] Within a few weeks of his arrival he had given his first recital, opened a music school which was rapidly overwhelmed by applications,^[38] and become conductor of the Gothenburg Society for Classical Choral Music.^[38] In a few months Smetana had achieved both professional 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.^[39]

Gothenburg, Sweden, Smetana's base between 1856 and 1861

In summer 1857, Smetana came home to Prague and found Kateřina in failing health. In June, Smetana's father František died.^[40] That autumn Smetana returned to Gothenburg, with Kateřina and their surviving daughter Žofie, but before 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.^[41] Liszt was Smetana's principal teacher throughout the latter's creative life, and at this time was crucially able to revive his spirits and rescue him from the relative artistic isolation of Gothenburg.^[37]

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.^[42] 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,^[43] and began a third symphonic poem Hakon Jarl, based on the tragic drama by Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger.^[44] Smetana also wrote two large-scale piano works: Macbeth and the Witches, and an Étude in C in the style of Liszt.^[45]

Bereavement, remarriage and return to Prague[link]

	Polka in A minor from Memories of Bohemia in Polka Form, Op. 12, 1859 Piano: Veronika PtáÄ?ková
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KateÅ™ina's health gradually worsened and in the spring of 1859 failed completely. Homeward bound, she died at Dresden on 19 April 1859. Smetana wrote that she had died "gently, without our knowing anything until the quiet drew my attention to her."^[46] After placing Žofie with KateÅ™ina's mother, Smetana spent time with Liszt in Weimar, where he was introduced to the music of the comic opera Der Barbier von Bagdad, by Liszt's pupil Peter Cornelius.^[47] This work would influence Smetana's own later career as an opera composer.^[48] 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.^[37] The marriage took place the following year, on 10 July 1860, after which Smetana and his new wife returned to Sweden for a final season. 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.^[44]

Meanwhile, the defeat of Franz Joseph's army at Solferino in 1859 had weakened the Habsburg Empire, and led to the fall from power of von Bach.^[49] 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.^[12][44] Before deciding his own future, in September Smetana set out on a concert tour of Holland and Germany. He was still hoping to secure a reputation as a pianist, but once again he experienced failure.^[44] 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;^[50] Smetana responded that "a prophet is without honour in his own land."^[44] 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. It is to this that I will sacrifice myself."^[51]

National prominence[link]

Seeking recognition[link]

In 1861, it was announced that a Provisional Theatre would be built in Prague, as a home for Czech opera.^[52] Smetana saw this as an opportunity to write and stage opera that would reflect Czech national character, similar to the portrayals of Russian life in Mikhail Glinka's operas.^[12] He hoped that he might be considered for the theatre's conductorship, but the post went to Jan Nepomuk Maýr, apparently because the conservative faction in charge of the project considered Smetana a "dangerous modernist", in thrall to avant garde composers such as Liszt and Wagner.^[53][54] Smetana then turned his attention to an opera competition, organised by Count Jan von Harrach, which offered prizes of 600 gulden each for the best comic and historical operas based on Czech culture.^[53] With no useful model on which to base his work—Czech opera as a genre scarcely existed—Smetana had to create his own style. He engaged Karel Sabina, his comrade from the 1848 barricades, as his librettist,^[55] and received Sabina's text in February 1862, a story of the 13th century invasion of Bohemia by Otto of Brandenburg. In April 1863 he submitted the score, under the title of The Brandenburgers in Bohemia.^[55][56]

Prague Conservatoire (modern photograph): Smetana's bid to become its director failed.

At this stage in his career, Smetana's command of the Czech language was poor. His generation of Czechs was educated in German,^[57] and he had difficulty expressing himself in what was supposedly his native tongue.^[56] 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 the Czech language developed he composed patriotic choruses for the Society; The Three Riders and The Renegade were performed at concerts in early 1863.^[58] In March of that year Smetana was elected president of the music section of Umělecká Beseda, a society for Czech artists.^[56] By 1864 he was proficient enough in the Czech language to be appointed as music critic to the main Czech language newspaper Národní listy.^[59] Meanwhile, Bettina had given birth to another daughter, Božena.^[60]

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.^[53][56] 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 especially created for me," he wrote to a Swedish friend.^[61] His hopes were again dashed by his affiliation with the perceived radical Liszt, the appointing committee choosing the conservative patriot Josef KrejÄ?í for the post.^[62]

Almost three years passed before Smetana was declared the winner of Harrach's opera competition.^[53] 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 conduct the piece. The idiom was too advanced for Maýr's liking, and the opera was eventually staged under the composer's own direction.^[53] "I was called on stage nine times," Smetana wrote, recording that the house was sold out and that the critics were full of praise.^[63] 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.^[64]

Opera maestro[link]

In July 1863, Sabina had delivered the libretto for a second opera, 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 version with spoken dialogue.^[56] The opera was to go through several revisions and restructures before reaching the definitive three-act form that in due course established Smetana's international reputation.^[65][66] The opera's first performance was a failure; it was held on 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 cover costs.^[67] When presented at the Provisional Theatre in its final form, in September 1870, it was a tremendous public success.^[68]

Back in 1866, as the composer of The Brandenburgers with its overtones of German military aggression, Smetana thought he might be targeted by the invading Prussians, so he absented himself from Prague until hostilities ceased.^[67] He returned in September, and almost immediately achieved a long-standing ambition – appointment as principal conductor of the Provisional Theatre, at an annual salary of 1,200 gulden.^[69] In the absence of a body of suitable Czech opera, Smetana in his first season presented standard works by Weber, Mozart, Donizetti, Rossini and Glinka, with a revival of his own Bartered Bride.^[65][69] The quality of Smetana's production of Glinka's A Life for the Tsar angered Glinka's champion Mily Balakirev, who expressed himself forcefully. This caused prolonged hostility between the two men.^[69][70] On 16 May 1868 Smetana, representing Czech musicians, helped to lay the foundation stone for the future National Theatre;^[68] he had written a Festive Overture for the occasion. That same evening Smetana's third opera, Dalibor, was premièred at Prague's New Town Theatre.^[56] Although its initial reception was warm its reviews were poor, and Smetana resigned himself to its failure.^[71] This opera soon became the basis of a series of attacks on Smetana, followed by a concerted effort to drive him from his position as Provisional Theatre conductor.^[69]

Opposition[link]

Early in his conductorship Smetana had made a powerful enemy in František Pivoda, the Director of the Prague School of Singing. Formerly a supporter of Smetana's, Pivoda was aggrieved when the conductor recruited singing talent from abroad rather than from Pivoda's school.^[72][73] In an increasingly bitter public correspondence, Pivoda claimed that Smetana was using his position to further his own career, at the expense of other composers.^[74]

Pivoda then took issue with Dalibor, calling it an example of extreme "Wagnerism" and thus, unsuited as a model for Czech national opera.^[75] "Wagnerism" meant the adoption of Wagner's theories of a continuous role for the orchestra and the building of an integrated musical drama, rather than a stringing together of lyrical numbers.^[56][76] The Provisional Theatre's chairman, František Rieger, had first accused Smetana of Wagnerist tendencies after the first performance of The Brandenburgers,^[63] and the issue eventually divided Prague's musical society. Music critic Otakar Hostinský believed that Wagner's theories should be the basis of the national opera, and argued that Dalibor was the beginning of the "correct" direction. The opposite camp, led by Pivoda, supported the principles of Italian opera, in which the voice rather than the orchestra was the predominant dramatic device.^[56]

Even within the theatre itself there was division. Rieger led a campaign to eject Smetana from the conductorship and reappoint Maýr, and in December 1872 a petition signed by 86 subscribers to the theatre called for Smetana's resignation.^[74] Strong support from vice-chairman Antonín Čísek, and an ultimatum from prominent musicians among whom was Antonín Dvořák, ensured Smetana's survival. In January 1873 he was reappointed, with a bigger salary and increased responsibility as Artistic Director.^[56][74]

Smetana gradually brought more operas by emergent Czech composers to the theatre, but little of his own work.^[74] By 1872 he had completed his monumental fourth opera, Libuše, his most ambitious work to date,^[77] but was withholding its premiere for the future opening of the National Theatre.^[78] The machinations of Pivoda and his supporters distracted Smetana from composition,^[74] and he had further vexation when The Bartered Bride was produced in Saint Petersburg, in January 1871. Although the audience was enthusiastic,^[74] press reports were hostile, one describing the work as "no better than that of a gifted fourteen-year-old boy."^[79] Smetana was deeply offended, and blamed his old adversary, Balakirev, for inciting negative feelings against the opera.^[79]

Final decade[link]

Smetana near the end of his life

Deafness[link]

In the respite following his reappointment, Smetana concentrated on his fifth opera, The Two Widows, composed between June 1873 and January 1874.^[80] After its first performance at the Provisional Theatre on 27 March 1874, Smetana's supporters presented him with a decorative baton.^[56] But his opponents continued to attack him, comparing his conductorship unfavourably with the Maýr regime and claiming that under Smetana "Czech opera sickens to death at least once annually."^[80] By the summer Smetana was ill; a throat infection was followed by a rash and an apparent blockage to the ears. By mid-August, unable to work, he transferred his duties to his deputy, Adolf ÄŒech. A press announcement stated that Smetana had "become ill as a result of nervous strain caused by certain people recently."^[80]

In September, Smetana told the theatre he would resign his appointment unless his health improved.^[81] He had become totally deaf in his right ear, and in October lost all hearing in his left ear also. After his subsequent resignation the theatre offered him an annual pension of 1,200 gulden for the continued right to perform his operas, an arrangement which Smetana reluctantly accepted.^[82] Money raised in Prague by former students, and by former lover Fröjda Benecke in Gothenburg, amounted to 1,244 gulden.^[83] This allowed Smetana to seek medical treatment abroad, but to no avail.^[56] In January 1875 Smetana wrote in his journal: "If my disease is incurable, then I should prefer to be liberated from this life."^[84] His spirits were further lowered at this time by a deterioration in his relationship with Bettina, mainly over money matters.^[85] "I cannot live under the same roof as a person who hates and persecutes me", Smetana informed her.^[86] Although divorce was considered, the couple stayed unhappily together.^[87]

Late flowering[link]

In worsening health, Smetana continued to compose. In June 1876 he, Bettina and their two daughters left Prague for Jabkenice, the home of his eldest daughter Žofie where, in tranquil surroundings, Smetana was able to work undisturbed.^[88] Before leaving Prague he had begun a cycle of six symphonic poems, called Má vlast ("My Fatherland"),^[89] and had completed the first two, VyÅ¡ehrad and Vltava, which had both been performed in Prague during 1875.^[90] In Jabkenice Smetana composed four more movements, the complete cycle being first performed on 5 November 1882 under the baton of Adolf ÄŒech.^[91] Other major works composed in these years were the E minor String Quartet, From My Life, a series of Czech dances for piano, several choral pieces and three more operas: The Kiss, The Secret and The Devil's Wall, all of which received their first performances between 1876 and 1882.^[91]

The National Theatre in Prague, opened 1881, destroyed by fire, rebuilt in 1883

The long-delayed premiere of Smetana's opera LibuÅ¡e finally arrived when the National Theatre opened on 11 June 1881. He had not initially been given tickets, but at the last minute was asked into the theatre director's box. The audience received the work enthusiastically, and Smetana was called to the stage repeatedly.^[92][93] Shortly after this event the new theatre was destroyed by fire; despite his infirmities, Smetana helped to raise funds for the rebuilding.^[91][94] The restored theatre reopened on 18 November 1883, again with LibuÅ¡e^[91]

These years saw Smetana's growing recognition as the principal exponent of Czech national music.^[91] This status was celebrated by several events during Smetana's final years. On 4 January 1880, a special concert in Prague marked the 50th anniversary of his first public performance; Smetana attended, and played his Piano Trio in G minor from 1855. In May 1882 The Bartered Bride was given its 100th performance, an unprecedented event in the history of Czech opera, and so popular that a repeat "100th performance" was staged.^[91] A gala concert and banquet was arranged to honour Smetana's 60th birthday in March 1884, but he was too ill to attend.^[91]

Illness and death[link]

Smetana's gravestone at the Vyšehrad Cemetery, Prague

In 1879, Smetana had written to a friend, the Czech poet Jan Neruda, revealing fears of the onset of madness.^[95] By the winter of 1882–83 he was experiencing depression, insomnia, and hallucinations, together with giddiness, cramp and a temporary loss of speech.^[95] In 1883 he began writing a new symphonic suite, Prague Carnival, but could get no further than an Introduction and a Polonaise.^[96] He started a new opera, Viola, based on the character in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night,^[97] but wrote only fragments as his mental state gradually deteriorated.^[96] In October 1883 his behaviour at a private reception in Prague disturbed his friends;^[96] by the middle of February 1884 he had ceased to be coherent, and was periodically violent.^[98] On 23 April his family, unable to nurse him any longer, removed him to the KateÅ™inky Lunatic Asylum in Prague, where he died on 12 May 1884.^[91][98]

The Bedřich Smetana Museum on the banks of the Vltava, Prague

The hospital registered the cause of death as senile dementia.^[98] However, Smetana's family believed that his physical and mental decline was due to syphilis.^[98] An analysis of the autopsy report, published by the German neurologist Dr Ernst Levin in 1972, came to the same conclusion.^[99] Tests carried out by Prof. Emanuel VlÄ?ek in the late 20th century on samples of muscular tissue from Smetana's exhumed body provided further evidence of the disease. However, this research has been challenged by Czech physician Dr Jiří Ramba, who has argued that VlÄ?ek's tests do not provide a basis for a reliable conclusion, citing the age and state of the tissues and highlighting reported symptoms of Smetana's that were incompatible with syphilis.^[100]

Smetana's funeral took place on 15 May, at the Týn Church in Prague's Old Town. The subsequent procession to the VyÅ¡ehrad Cemetery was led by members of the Hlahol, bearing torches, and was followed by a large crowd.^[98] The grave later became a place of pilgrimage for musical visitors to Prague.^[101] On the funeral evening, a scheduled performance of The Bartered Bride at the National Theatre was allowed to proceed, the stage draped with black cloth as a mark of respect.^[98]

Smetana was survived by Bettina, their daughters Zdeňka and Božena, and by Žofie. None of them played any significant role in Smetana's musical life. Bettina lived until 1908; Žofie, who had married Josef Schwarz in 1874, predeceased her stepmother, dying in 1902.^[2] The younger daughters eventually married, living out their lives away from the public eye.^[2] A permanent memorial to Smetana's life and work is the Smetana Museum in Prague, originally founded in 1926 within the Charles University's Institute for Musicology.^[102] In 1936 the museum moved to the former Waterworks building on the banks of the Vltava, and since 1976 has been part of the Czech Museum of Music.^[102]

Music[link]

The basic materials from which Smetana fashioned his art, according to Newmarch, were nationalism, realism and romanticism.^[103] A particular feature of all his later music is its descriptive character – all his major compositions outside his operas are written to programmes, and many are specifically autobiographical.^[104] Smetana's champions have recognised the major influences on his work as Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz – the "progressives" – while those same advocates have often played down the significance of "traditionalist" composers such as Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Meyerbeer.^[105]

Piano works[link]

All but a handful of Smetana's compositions before his departure for Gothenburg had been piano works.^[106] Some of these early pieces have been dismissed by music historian Harold Schonberg as "bombastic virtuoso rhetoric derived from Liszt".^[107] Under Proksch, however, Smetana acquired more polish, as revealed in works such as the G minor Sonata of 1846 and the E-flat Polka of the same year. The set of Six Characteristic Pieces of 1848 was dedicated to Liszt, who described it as "the most outstanding, finely felt and finely finished pieces that have recently come to my note."^[108] In this period Smetana planned a cycle of so-called "album leaves", short pieces in every major and minor key, after the manner of Chopin's Preludes.^[109] The project became somewhat disorganised; in the pieces completed, some keys are repeated while others are unrepresented.^[109][110] After Smetana's final return from Gothenburg, when he committed himself primarily to the development of Czech opera, he wrote nothing for the piano for 13 years.^[110]

In his last decade Smetana composed three substantial piano cycles. The first, from 1875, was entitled Dreams. It was dedicated to former pupils of Smetana's, who had raised funds to cover medical expenses, and is also a tribute to the composer's models of the 1840s—Schumann, Chopin and Liszt.^[110] Smetana's last major piano works were the two Czech Dances cycles of 1877 and 1879. The first of these had the purpose, as Smetana explained to his publisher, of "idealising the polka, as Chopin in his day did with the mazurka."^[110] The second cycle is a medley of dances, each given a specific title so that people would know "which dances with real names we Czechs have."^[110]

Vocal and choral[link]

Smetana's early songs are settings of German poems for single voice. Apart from his 1848 Song of Freedom, he did not begin to write pieces for a full choir until after his Gothenburg sojourn, when he composed numerous works for the Hlahol choral society, mostly for unaccompanied male voices.^[111] Smetana's choral music is generally nationalistic in character, ranging in scale from the short Ceremonial Chorus written after the death of the composer's revolutionary friend HavlíÄ?ek, to the setting of Song of the Sea, a substantial work with the character of a choral drama.^[112]

Towards the end of his life Smetana returned to simple song-writing, with five Evening Songs (1879) to words by the poet Vítězslav Hálek. His final completed work, Our Song (1883), is the last of four settings of texts by Josef Srb-Debrnov. Despite the state of Smetana's health, this is a happy celebration of Czech song and dance. The piece was lost for many years, and only received its first performance after rediscovery in 1924.^[113]

Chamber[link]

Apart from a juvenile fantasia for violin and piano, Smetana composed only four chamber works, yet each had a deep personal significance.^[114] The Piano Trio in G minor of 1855 was composed after the death of his daughter BedÅ™iÅ¡ka; its style is close to that of Robert Schumann, with hints of Liszt, and the overall tone is elegiac.^[115] It was 20 years before he returned to the chamber genre with his first String Quartet. This E minor work, subtitled From My Life, was autobiographical in character, illustrating the composer's youthful enthusiasm for his art, his friendships and loves and, in a change of mood, the onset of his deafness represented by a long harmonic E in the final movement above ominous string tremolos.^[116] His second String Quartet, in D minor, written in 1882–83 in defiance of his doctor's orders to refrain from all musical activity,^[117][118] was composed in short snatches, "a swirl of music of a person who has lost his hearing."^[119] It represents Smetana's frustrations with his life, but is not wholly gloomy, and includes a bright polka.^[119] It was one of his final compositions; between the two quartets he wrote a violin and piano duet From the homeland, a mixture of melancholy and happiness with strong affinity to Czech folk material.^[119]

Orchestral[link]

Dissatisfied with his first large-scale orchestral work, the D major Overture of 1848,^[120] Smetana studied passages from Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Weber and Berlioz before producing his Triumphal Symphony of 1853.^[121] Though this is dismissed by Rosa Newmarch as "an epithalamium for a Habsburg Prince",^[122] Smetana's biographer Brian Large identifies much in the piece that characterises the composer's more mature works.^[123] Despite the symphony's rejection by the Court and the lukewarm reception on its premiere, Smetana did not abandon the work. It was well received in Gothenburg in 1860,^[124] and a revised version was performed in Prague in 1882, without the "triumphal" tag, under Adolf ÄŒech.^[121] The piece is now sometimes called the Festive Symphony.

Smetana's visit to Liszt at Weimar in the summer of 1857, where he heard the latter's Faust Symphony and Die Ideale, caused a material reorientation of Smetana's orchestral music. These works gave Smetana answers to many compositional problems relating to the structure of orchestral music,^[41] and suggested a means for expressing literary subjects by a synthesis between music and text, rather than by simple musical illustration.^[121][125] These insights enabled Smetana to write the three Gothenburg symphonic poems, (Richard III, Wallenstein's Camp and Hakon Jarl),^[121] works which transformed Smetana from a composer primarily of salon pieces to a modern neo-Romantic, capable of handling large-scale forces and demonstrating the latest musical concepts.^[121]

	Live recordings of Smetana's works: Má vlast::Šárka Má vlast:: Vltava
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From 1862 Smetana was largely occupied with opera and, apart from a few short pieces,^[126] did not return to purely orchestral music before beginning Má vlast in 1872. In his introduction to the Collected Edition Score, FrantiÅ¡ek Bartol brackets Má vlast with the opera LibuÅ¡e as "direct symbols of [the] consummating national struggle".^[127] Má vlast is the first of Smetana's mature large-scale works that is independent of words, and its musical ideas are bolder than anything he had tried before.^[128] To musicologist John Clapham, the cycle presents "a cross-section of Czech history and legend and impressions of its scenery, and ... conveys vividly to us Smetana's view of the ethos and greatness of the nation."^[129] Despite its nationalistic associations this work has, according to Newmarch, carried Smetana's name further afield than anything he wrote, with the exception of The Bartered Bride Overture.^[130] Smetana dedicated Má vlast to the city of Prague; after its first performance in November 1882 it was acclaimed by the Czech musical public as the true representation of Czech national style.^[121] Its Vltava (or "The Moldau" in German) movement, depicting the river that runs through Prague towards its junction with the Elbe, is Smetana's best-known and most internationally popular orchestral composition.^[131]

Opera[link]

Smetana had virtually no precursors in Czech opera apart from František Škroup, whose works had rarely lasted beyond one or two performances.^[132] In his mission to create a new canon, rather than using traditional folksong Smetana turned to the popular dance music of his youth, especially the polka, to establish his link with the vernacular.^[132] He drew on existing European traditions, notably Slavonic and French,^[132] but made only scarce use of arias, preferring to base his scores on ensembles and choruses.^[133]

A 1919 edition of the score of The Bartered Bride

	Live recording of Smetana's works Overture: The Bartered Bride
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Although a follower of Wagner's reforms of the operatic genre, which he believed would be its salvation,^[76] Smetana rejected accusations of excessive Wagnerism, claiming that he was sufficiently occupied with "Smetanism, for that is the only honest style!"^[134] The predominantly "national" character of the first four operas is tempered by the lyrical romanticism of those written later,^[135] particularly the last three, composed in the years of Smetana's deafness. The first of this final trio, The Kiss, written when Smetana was receiving painful medical treatment is described by Newmarch as a work of serene beauty, in which tears and smiles alternate throughout the score.^[136] Smetana's librettist for "The Kiss" was the young feminist Eliška Krásnohorská, who also supplied the texts for his final two operas. She dominated the ailing composer, who had no say in the subject-matter, the voice types or the balance between solos, duets and ensembles.^[132] Nevertheless, critics have noted few signs of a decline in Smetana's powers in these works, while his increasing proficiency in the Czech language meant that his settings of the language are much superior to those of his earlier operas.^[132]

Smetana's eight operas created the bedrock of the Czech opera repertory, but of these only The Bartered Bride is performed regularly outside the composer's homeland. After reaching Vienna in 1892,^[137] and London in 1895,^[138] it rapidly became part of the repertory of every major opera company worldwide. Newmarch argues that The Bartered Bride, while not a "gem of the first order", is nevertheless "a perfectly cut and polished stone of its kind."^[138] Its trademark overture, which Newmarch says "lifts us off our feet with its madcap vivacity",^[138] was composed in a piano version before Smetana received the draft libretto. Clapham believes that this has few precedents in the entire history of opera.^[139] Smetana himself was later inclined to disparage his achievement: "The Bartered Bride was merely child's play, written straight off the reel".^[138] In the view of German critic William Ritter, Smetana's creative powers reached their zenith with his third opera, Dalibor.^[140]

Reception[link]

Even in his own homeland the general public was slow to recognise Smetana. As a young composer and pianist he was well regarded in Prague musical circles, and had the approval of Liszt, Proksch and others, but the public's lack of acknowledgement was a principal factor behind his self-imposed exile in Sweden. After his return he was not taken particularly seriously,^[58] and was hard put to get audiences for his new works, hence his "prophet without honour" remark after the nearly empty hall and indifferent reception of Richard III and Wallenstein's Camp at Žofín Island in January 1862.^[141]

Smetana's first noteworthy public success was his initial opera The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, in 1866 when he was already 42 years old. His second opera, The Bartered Bride, survived the unfortunate mistiming of its opening night and became an enduring popular triumph. The different style of his third opera, Dalibor, closer to that of Wagnerian music drama, was not readily understood by the public and was condemned by critics who believed that Czech opera should be based on folk-song.^[142][143] It disappeared from the repertory after only a handful of performances.^[143] Thereafter the machinations which accompanied Smetana's tenure as Provisional Theatre conductor restricted his creative output until 1874.

In his final decade, the most fruitful of his compositional career despite his deafness and increasing ill-health, Smetana belatedly received national recognition. Of his later operas, The Two Widows and The Secret were warmly received,^[144] while The Kiss was greeted by an "overwhelming ovation".^[91] The ceremonial opera LibuÅ¡e was received with thunderous applause for the composer; by this time (1881) the disputes around his music had declined, and the public was ready to honour him as the founder of Czech music.^[145] Nevertheless, the first few performances in October 1882 of an evidently under-rehearsed The Devil's Wall were chaotic,^[146] and the composer was left feeling "dishonoured and dispirited".^[147] This disappointment was swiftly mitigated by the acclaim which followed the first performance of the complete Má vlast cycle in November: "Everyone rose to his feet and the same storm of unending applause was repeated after each of the six parts ... At the end of Blaník [the final part] the audience was beside itself and the people could not bring themselves to take leave of the composer."^[148]

Character and reputation[link]

Smetana's biographers describe him as physically frail and unimpressive in appearance, yet at least in his youth he had a joie-de-vivre which women evidently found attractive.^[149] He was also excitable, passionate and strong-willed, determined to make his career in music whatever the hardships, over the wishes of his father who wanted him to become a brewer or a civil servant.^[16] Throughout his career he stood his ground; when under the severest of criticism for the "Wagnerism" in Dalibor he responded by writing Libuše, even more firmly based on the scale and concept of Wagnerian music drama.^[150] His personal life became stressful; his marriage to Bettina was loveless, and effectively broke down altogether in the years of illness and relative poverty towards the end of his life.^[151] Little of his relationships with his children is recorded, although it is reported that, on the day that he was transferred to the asylum, Žofie was "crying as though her heart would break".^[152]

The Vltava river, flowing through Prague

There is broad agreement among most commentators that Smetana created a canon of Czech opera where none had previously existed, and that he developed a style of music in all his compositions that equated with the emergent Czech national spirit.^{[105][153][154]} A modified view is presented by music writer Michael Steen, who questions whether "nationalistic music" can in fact exist: "We should recognise that, whereas music is infinitely expressive, on its own it is not good at describing concrete, earthly objects or concepts."^[155] He concludes that much is dependent upon what listeners are conditioned to hear.^[155]

According to musicologist John Tyrrell, Smetana's close identification with Czech nationalism, and the tragic circumstances of his last years, have tended to affect the objectivity with which his work has been assessed, particularly in his native land.^[105] Tyrrell argues that the almost iconic status awarded to Smetana in his homeland "monumentalized him into a figure where any criticism of his life or work was discouraged" by the Czech authorities, even as late as the last part of the 20th century.^[105] As a result, Tyrrell claims, a view of Czech music has been propagated which downplays the contributions of contemporaries and successors such as Dvořák, JanáÄ?ek, Josef Suk and other lesser-known figures.^[105] This is at odds with perceptions in the outside world, where Dvořák is far more frequently played and much better known. Harold Schonberg observes that "Smetana was the one who founded Czech music, but Antonín Dvořák ... was the one who popularized it."^[12]

Notes and references[link]

Sources[link]

• Abraham, Gerald (1968). Slavonic and Romantic Music. London: Faber and Faber. 
• Clapham, John (1980). "Bedrich Smetana". New Grove Music and Musicians (Special English edition) ed. Stanley Sadie. 17. London: Macmillan. pp. 391–403. ISBN 0-333-23111-2. 
• Clapham, John (1972). Smetana (Master Musicians series). London: J.M. Dent. ISBN 0-460-03133-3. 
• Grout, Donald Jay and Hermine Wegel Williams (2003). A Short History of Opera. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11958-5. http://books.google.com/?id=l_b2vIXHsUkC&pg=PA534&lpg=PA534&dq=Karel+Sebor. Retrieved 10 June 2009. 
• Katz, Derek (1997). "Smetana's Second String Quartet: Voice of Madness or Triumph of Spirit". The Musical Quarterly (Oxford: OUP) 81 (4): 516–36. DOI:10.1093/mq/81.4.516. http://mq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/81/4/516. Retrieved 24 May 2009.  (Subscription required)
• Large, Brian (1970). Smetana. London: Duckworth. ISBN 0-7156-0512-7. 
• Newmarch, Rosa (1942). The Music of Czechoslovakia. Oxford: OUP. ISBN 0-306-77563-8. OCLC 3291947. 
• Ottlová, Marta. "Smetana, Bedrich". Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/. Retrieved 12 May 2009.  (Subscription required)
• Ramba, Jiří (2009 (2nd edition)). Slavné Ä?eské lebky (Famous Czech Skulls). Prague: Galén. pp. 151–299. ISBN 978-80-7262-325-9.  (Czech)
• Schonberg, Harold C. (1975). The Lives of the Great Composers, Vol. II. London: Futura Publications. ISBN 0-86007-723-3. 
• "Stálé expozice Národního muzea". Národní muzeum. http://www.nm.cz/expozice-detail.php?f_id=72. Retrieved 6 June 2009.  (Czech)
• Steen, Michael (2003). The Lives and Times of the Great Composers. London: Icon Books. ISBN 978-1-84046-679-9. 
• Tyrrell, John. "The Bartered Bride (Prodaná nevÄ›sta)". Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/. Retrieved 10 June 2009.  (Subscription required)
• Tyrrell, John. "Smetana, Bedrich". Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/. Retrieved 12 May 2009.  (Subscription required)

External links[link]

Media related to Bedřich Smetana at Wikimedia Commons

• Free scores by Smetana at the International Music Score Library Project