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Czech National Revival was a cultural movement, which took part in the Czech lands during the 18th and 19th century. The purpose of this movement was to revive Czech language, culture and national identity. The most prominent figures of the revival movement were Josef Dobrovský and Josef Jungmann.

Background[link]

Following the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, Czech lands suffered from Germanisation politics of the Habsburg Emperors.

The oppression was connected also with the religion – up to 95% inhabitants of Bohemia were Protestants (See Hussite) when Habsburgs took power. Although they formerly promised freedom of religion, they started rampant anti-reformation and re-catholization efforts which made the most of Czech elites flee the country. This violent re-catholization is also one of the reasons behind today's Czech atheism.

The Czech language was more or less eradicated from state administration, literature, schools, Charles University and among the upper classes. Books written in Czech were burned and any publication in Czech was considered to be heresy by the Jesuits. The Czech language was reduced to a means of communication between peasants, who were often illiterate. Therefore, the Revival looked for inspiration among ordinary Czechs in the countryside.

Milestones[link]

Josef Dobrovský published his Czech grammar book in 1809. In 1817, Václav Hanka claimed to have discovered medieval Manuscripts of Dvůr Králové and of Zelená Hora, which were decades later proven as Hanka's forgeries.

Josef Jungmann published the five-volume Czech-German dictionary in 1834–1839. It was a major lexicographical work, which had a great formative influence on the Czech language. Jungmann used vocabulary of the Bible of Kralice (1579–1613) period and of the language used by his contemporaries. He borrowed words not present in Czech from other Slavic languages or created neologisms. He also inspired development of Czech scientific terminology, thus, making it possible for original Czech research to develop.

With the renaissance of language, Czech culture flourished. Czech institutions were established to celebrate the Czech history and culture. The National Theatre opened in 1883 and the National Museum in 1818.

Results[link]

As a result, the Czech language has been restored as an official language in the Czech lands and is now used by the vast majority of Czechs, and serves as an official language in the Czech Republic.

National revival may be:

• any current of Romantic nationalism, specifically:
  • the National awakening in the Balkans during the 19th century
  • Bulgarian National Revival
  • Czech National Revival
  • Lithuanian National Revival

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Josef Kajetán Tyl
Portrait of Josef Kajetán Tyl by Jan Vilímek
Born	(1808-02-04)4 February 1808 Kutná Hora, Austrian Empire
Died	11 July 1856(1856-07-11) (aged 48) Plzeň, Austrian Empire
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Czech
Genres	Romanticism
Notable work(s)	Fidlovačka Strakonický dudák
Spouse(s)	Magdalena Forchheimová
Partner(s)	Anna Forchheimová-Rajská
Relative(s)	Jiří Tyl (father) Barbora Králiková (mother)

Josef Kajetán Tyl (4 February 1808 – 11 July 1856; Czech pronunciation: [ˈjɔzɛf ˈkajɛtaːn ˈtɪl]) was a significant Czech dramatist, writer and actor. He was a notable figure of the Czech National Revival movement and is best known as the author of the current national anthem of the Czech Republic titled Kde domov můj.

Life[link]

Josef Kajetán Tyl was the first-born son of Jiří Tyl, a tailor and retired military band oboe player, and his wife Barbora née Králíková, daughter of a miller and groats maker. He was christened Josef František, yet this name was changed into Josef Kajetán when he underwent confirmation at the age of eleven. The family surname had several written forms - Tylly, Tylli, Tilly or Tyll - and was later changed to Tyl. Josef Kajetán had four younger siblings: one brother and three sisters, but except sister Anna none of them survived till adulthood.

After finishing elementary school, Josef Kajetán studied at a grammar school in Prague and in Hradec Králové. Among his teachers belonged the leading Czech linguist and writer Josef Jungmann and the playwright Václav Kliment Klicpera. After finishing his studies at the grammar school, he started to study philosophy in Prague.

Already as a student, Tyl started to be active in theatre and finally left school to become a member of the Hilmer travelling theatre company. When the company disbanded after two years of journeying around the countryside, he returned to Prague and got a job of a clerk in an infantry regiment's office. In his free time he wrote theatre plays and worked as an actor at the Estates Theatre. Due to his abilities he could leave his job in the military in 1842, as he was given a full time job at the Estates Theatre, where he became the director, organizer and playwright of the Czech ensemble in the otherwise mainly German theatre.

In 1833 Tyl became a redactor of a renewed Czech magazine called Květy (Blossoms), which exists until today. He was also a redactor of the magazines Vlastimil and Pražský posel (Prague Messenger), and of the newspaper Sedlské noviny (Peasant newspapers), that were later banned because of his political involvement.

Tyl used several pen names that were often derived from the name of his home town Kutná Hora, for example Horský, Horník, Kutnohorský and Vítek.

In the revolutionary year 1848 Tyl became politically active and was briefly a member of the Austrian parliament in Vienna. Because he fought for the independence of the Czech nation from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, he was later marked as politically unreliable by the authorities and expelled from the Estates Theatre. He wanted to found his own travelling theatre company but his request was rejected, so in 1851 he joined an existing one and left for a tour, together with his family. Yet the theatre company did not fare well, and the Tyl family ended up in powerty. In 1856, during his theatre's stay in Pilsen, the 48 years old Tyl died of an unknown illness and was buried at a local cemetery.

A theatre in Plzeň was later named in his honor Divadlo Josefa Kajetána Tyla.

Work[link]

Tyl was an author of several novels and short stories, he is however most famous for his about 20 theatre plays, which can be divided into several groups.

Plays describing the life of the Czech society in Tyl's time period[link]

• Paličova dcera (Arsonist's daughter)
• Pražský flamendr (Prague playboy)
• Bankrotář (Bankrupter)
• Chudý kejklíř (Poor Juggler)

Plays portraying famous events from Czech history (especially the Hussite movement)[link]

• Jan Hus
• Žižka z Trocnova (Žižka of Trocnov)
• Krvavý soud aneb kutnohorští havíři (A Bloody Verdict: The Miners of Kutná Hora)
• Krvavé křtiny, aneb Drahomíra a její synové (Bloody Baptism, or Drahomír and Her Sons)

Plays featuring fairy tale characters (fairies, witches)[link]

• Strakonický dudák (The Bagpiper of Strakonice) – one of his most famous works
• Lesní panna aneb cesta do Ameriky (The Forest Maiden: A Journey to America)
• Tvrdohlavá žena (The Stubborn Woman)
• Jiříkovo vidění (George's Vision)
• Čert na zemi (Devil On Earth)

Other plays[link]

• Paní Marjánka, matka pluku (Lady Marjánka, Mother of the Regiment)
• Fidlovačka – a song from this play, named Kde domov můj, became Czech national anthem in 1918
• Slepý mládenec (The Blind Young Man)

Family[link]

Tyl's wife was a Czech actress Magdalena Forchheimová (1803–1870), who performed under the pen name Skalná. Tyl met her in 1829 during his first tour with a travelling theatre company, where they both performed. They married on 28 January 1839, yet their marriage stayed childless, as after a still birth Magdalena couldn't have any more children.

In 1841 Tyl fell in love with his wife's much younger sister Anna, who was also a talented actress and performed under the pen name Anna Rajská (1824–1903). They started an affair, Tyl did not divorce or leave his wife however and all three of them lived together in one household till his death. Anna bore her brother-in-law eight illegitimate children, their youngest son was born one month after Tyl died. Their sons went by their mother's surname Forchheim, daughters were allowed by the authorities to use father's surname Tyl.

On 24 April 1861, five years after Tyl's death, Anna married Tyl's colleague, actor Josef Ladislav Turnovský, with whom she had three more children. Turnovský took care not only of Tyl's family but also of his legacy by saving his manuscripts and publishing his works.

Children of Josef Kajetán Tyl[link]

• Josef Otakar Forchheim (1843–1907), doctor of philosophy and gymnasium professor in Plzeň, buried in Prague at the Slavin cemetery
• Jan Stanislav Forchheim (1845–1890), turner and military band musician
• Marie Eleonora Tylová (1848–1868), actress, buried in the village of Morkovice u Kroměříže
• Eliška Tylová (1850–1909), governess and actress, buried in Prague at the Slavín cemetery, alongside her mother
• Vojtěch Josef Forchheim (1851–1862), drowned as a child in the Vltava River
• František K. Forchheim (1853–1902), actor of the National Theatre, used one of his father's pen names, Horník, as his own pen name
• stillborn boy (1855–1855)
• Kajetán Josef Forchheim (1856 – ?), educated in bakery, later disappeared, fate unknown

Sources[link]

• "Osudy těch druhých aneb Lidé kolem Tyla" by Helena Pospíchalová
• "Czechs in History - Josef Kajetan Tyl" by Alena Škodová

External links[link]

• "Czechs in History" article on Radio Praha website

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Josef Kajetán Tyl

Vilém Blodek (October 3, 1834, Prague – May 1, 1874, Prague) was a Czech composer, flautist, and pianist.

Biography[link]

Blodek was born into a poor family and was educated at a German Piarist school in Prague. After studying with Dreyschock (piano) and at the Prague Conservatory (1846–52) with Antonín Eiser (flute) and Johann Friedrich Kittl (composition)^[1], he became a music teacher in Lubycza, Galicia (1853–5). On returning to Prague, he worked as a concert pianist and music teacher and, briefly, as second conductor of the Prague Männergesangverein, for which he wrote a number of patriotic choruses. In 1860 he succeeded Eiser as professor of flute at the conservatory, and, as a basis for teaching, he wrote his own flute tutor (1861). He was active as a writer of incidental music for the German and Czech theatres: from 1858 onwards he wrote music for 60 plays and collaborated with Smetana on music for the tableaux for the 1864 Shakespeare celebrations. In 1865 he married his pupil Marie Doudlebská. Overwork caused a nervous breakdown, and after a spell in a mental home in 1870, he returned there permanently in May 1871.

Style[link]

Blodek began composing at the conservatory at the age of 13 (wind sextet, 1847) in a style that owed much to his teacher Kittl, to Mendelssohn, and to the early German Romantics. His Symphony in D minor (1858–9), his most ambitious work at the time. His Flute Concerto (1862) is a brilliant and attractive flute work.

Blodek’s best-known work is his one-act opera V studni (In the Well), first performed at the Provisional Theater in November 1867. One of several comic village operas written to Sabina librettos (The Bartered Bride is the most famous), it has a cast of four characters and is made up of a handful of closed numbers: five solos, two duets, one quartet, an overture and an intermezzo, and three brief ensembles for chorus and soloists. It was the first Czech comic opera to replace spoken dialogue with recitative. Blodek’s opera is often considered to be one of the most ‘Czech’ operas after those of Smetana – it was written shortly after the première of The Bartered Bride. Blodek’s next opera, Zítek, again to a Sabina libretto (a historical comedy set in the 14th century), was a more ambitious work both in its musical vocabulary and in its operatic form. A full-length three-act opera with a large cast, it made some attempt to break down the divisions between the closed numbers of its predecessor, using arioso and a chorus more integrated into the action. Blodek completed only one act and part of the second before his death; Smetana, already ill, declined to finish it, but it was eventually completed by F.X. Vaňa and was performed for the first time in 1934 on the 100th anniversary of Blodek’s birth.

Works[link]

Stage

• Mlhavé obrazy [Misty Pictures] (incidental music to J. Brandeis’s play), Prague, 1859
• Clarissa (op), 1861, unfinished
• Chorista (vaudeville, F. Hainiš-Zdobnický), 1861, Prague, 22 March 1862, lost
• Hudba k slavnosti Shakespeareově [Music for the Shakespeare Celebrations], Prague, 23 April 1864
• V studni [In the Well] (comic op. 1, K. Sabina), Prague, Provisional, 17 Nov 1867
• Svatojánská pouť [St John’s Pilgrimage] (incidental music to F.F. Šamberk’s play), Prague, 1868
• Zítek (comic op. 3, Sabina), 1868–9, unfinished, completed by F.X. Váňa, Prague, National, 3 Oct 1934
• Incidental music to 60 plays

Vocal

• Die Kapelle
• Písně milostné [Love Songs] (Prague, 1909)
• 6 mužských sborů [6 Male-Voice Choruses], 1859,
• K bratrům [To the Brothers]
• 20 choruses for male voices, some to German texts by Joseph von Eichendorff, Heinrich Heine, and Adalbert von Chamisso, and to Czech texts by Václav Hanka, J. V. Jahn, J. Pick, and Karel Sabina; several published, including Ach ty Labe tiché [O quiet Elbe], 1865; Pijácká (Společná) [A Drinking-Song (A Social Song)], 1867; Pochod [March], 1867
• Sacred: Solemn Mass, D, 1853; Ave Maria, C, mixed choir, 1863 (Prague, 1888); Otče náš [Our Father], F, male voices, 1863; Veni Creator, C, mixed voices, 1863; Off, C, 1863, inc.; Mass, D, 1865

Instrumental

Orchestral:

• Concert overture., C, op.2, 1850
• Overture., D, 1854
• Symphony, d, 1858–9
• Concert Overture, E, 1859
• Overture, e, 1862
• Flute Concerto, D, 1862, edited by J. Kàan (Prague, 1903)
• Skladba [Composition], A, 2 flutes and orchestra, ?1862

Chamber:

• Sextet, D, flute, 2 violins, oboe, horn, trombone, 1847
• Salon Piece, C, violin, piano, 1850
• Grand Solo, D, flute, piano, op.1, 1851
• Allegro di bravura, D, flute, piano, 1852
• Fantasie e Capriccio, F, flute, piano, 1863
• Andante cantabile, D, flute, piano, 1863

Principal publishers: Urbánek, Vilímek, E. Starý, J.A. Christophe & Kuhé, Český hudební fond

References[link]

Biography based on article by John Tyrrell in Grove Music Online (Cambridge, 1988)

External links[link]

• "Short biography" (in Czech). Czech Music. http://www.czechmusic.org/main.php?action=osobnosti&id=20. Retrieved 2008-06-21. ^{[dead link]}
• "Brief info and selected wiorks". Classical Composers Database. http://www.classical-composers.org/comp/vilem. Retrieved 2008-08-27. 
• "Short biography". Answers.com. http://www.answers.com/topic/vil-m-blodek-1. Retrieved 2008-08-27.