File:Bedrich Smetana 02.jpg

Identifier: moderncomposerso00elso (find matches)
Title: Modern composers of Europe : being an account of the most recent musical progress in the various European nations, with some notes on their history, and critical and biographical sketches of the contemporary musical leaders in each country
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Elson, Arthur, 1873-1940
Subjects: Composers
Publisher: Boston : L.C. Page
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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achs works. Smetana soon becameimperial concertmeister at Prague, where he marriedthe pianist Katharin Kolar, and with her helpfounded a piano school. Smetana at this time became an ardent admirerof Liszt, who aided him in publishing some earlypiano works. Of the great masters symphonicpoems, he said, They mark the limit of possibilityin the direction of musical suggestiveness. Buthe did not live long enough to hear the frenziedrhapsodies of Richard Strauss. While visitingLiszt at Weimar, he heard Herbeck say that theCzechs were merely reproductive, whereupon hetook a solemn vow to use all his efforts in buildingup a national school in Bohemia. The world hasnot even now fully realized how well he fulfilledhis promise. From 1856 to 1861 Smetana occupied the postof conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra atGothenburg, Sweden. He had previously writtena Festival Overture and* a Triumph Symphony,but the three symphonic poems produced duringthis period show a surer hand and a riper genius.
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BEDRICH SMETANA. BOHEMIANS AND OTHERS 95 The subject of the first is Richard III., as por-trayed by Shakespeare, and the music gives a vividpicture of the early triumphs and final fall of thatdeformed and cruel monarch. Shakespeare wasevidently a favourite with the composer, for soonafterward he wrote a festival march for the poetsthree hundredth birthday, and just before his deathhe sketched the opera Viola, based on TwelfthNight. Another symphonic poem is Wallen-steins Camp, while Hakon Jarl depicts a Norsesubject. On his return to Bohemia, after the sickness anddeath of his first wife, Smetana began work uponthe first of the eight operas which have made himso famous in his native country. Wagner was hismodel in this field, but Smetana was not a mereimitator. We cannot write as Wagner writes,he said; but he was artist enough to admire andemploy the continuous melodic style, with musicthat should follow the dramatic scheme and neverdisturb or interrupt it. His first opera, The Brande

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