Ma Vlast: Smetana and the spirit of Czech Nationalism

Bedrich Smetana was born in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, in Litomyst Czechia on 2nd March 1824. Throughout the 19th century, his homeland of Bohemia was under the dominion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the 1870’s, Bohemia was undergoing a time of great ferment in discovering itself as an independent and autonomous region: his homeland. Music soon became a major instrument through which this emerging national spirit could be expressed. Architecturally, this took the form of the Czech State Opera House, which was dedicated to the performance of Czech operas.

Smetana took up the challenge to compose opera and music for this temple to the spirit of Czech national and cultural independence. Indeed, he considered it his patriotic duty to do so. He composed several operas, including The Bartered Bride (1863), which was greeted with much acclaim. It is a comic opera has a rousing overture, and the opera follows true love between two spirited young lovers. who escape the plans of their controlling parents and a cunning marriage broker, resisting the tradition of an arranged marriage, finding of course true love in the end. It is set in the heart of the Czech countryside and contains many motifs and themes from Czech musical folklore. It was a great success and marked Smetana out as the rising star of Czech musical life.

However, his culminating masterpiece is My Country—Ma Vlast—a unique blend between a symphony and a tone poem. It is in six movements, each chosen to depict a significant aspect of Czech history and culture. Ma Vlast has had an enormous impact on Czech national life. This led to him being regarded as a national hero, the composer who led the way in highlighting the essential spirit of his country. This has been the case for successive Czech generations.

Smetana achieved this through great personal struggle and difficulties. Music was always his guiding light and passion. He dropped out of school at sixteen to join a string quartet. His musical idol was Liszt, but whilst a musical prodigy on the piano, he failed to make a career in it.

Although born and raised in Bohemia, he felt unappreciated in his capital city of Prague, and in his early thirties, he left for a teaching position in Gothenburg, Sweden. He experienced intense homesickness for his home country, which ultimately gave rise to his great operas like The Bartered Bride, which was hailed as a turning point in Czech music and his greatest work, Ma Vlast, which is essentially a tone poem inspired by the achievements of Liszt, his role model and mentor in that genre. He also learned to speak and read in Czech, having grown up as many Czechs did, speaking German.

He soon returned home from Gothenburg, feeling stifled by the narrow Swedish provincialism he experienced there. This was triggered by a burgeoning Czech nationalism, a national spirit of the birth of a new nation, throwing over the chains of an oppressive imperial dynasty, which for Czechs was the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

One of the major important manifestations of this was the opening of a new national Opera House in Prague devoted to Czech opera, and Czech music. This was to be composed by Czech conductors and played accordingly by Czech musicians. Smetana was deeply moved by this. In his collected letters published in 1955 by Frantisek Bartos, Smetana wrote that "if we are gifted it is our duty to write for the glory of our country. " Hence his prolific opera compositions, all celebrating Czech national traditions, folk legends and myths in different ways. Tragically for him, and in a way for the Czech emerging nation, life got in the way, and led finally to his early and very painful death. As many young men did, he engaged in his own share of sexual adventures.

Sadly, in 1873, he caught syphilis, from which he experienced deeply painful and distressing symptoms. During a duck hunting expedition in the summer of that year, he felt intense dizziness. Shortly after that, he woke up one morning completely deaf. Not only was this permanent, but it also left him with a constant roar ("like a mighty waterfall"). The remaining eight years of his life were tortured and difficult.

Whilst constantly feted as a national hero, he became increasingly paranoid and wounded by critics who wondered whether a deaf composer was more worthy than a blind painter. Although given a state pension, he protested that the paltry amount impoverished him. He struggled to compose but did manage to complete three more operas. Only the first one of them, the Bartered Bride, has established a permanent place in the opera repertoire.

Also, in the last few years of his life, he composed his two string quartets, the first of which ends with the evocation of the extreme suffering caused by his rapidly escalating physical and emotional suffering. As he explained in a letter to a friend, the joyous opening is intended as a celebration of the glories of Czech national music, but finally abruptly stops in the key of E as a shrill discordant note of despair brings the work to a sudden, shocking halt.

He continued to struggle on despite the odds, completing three more operas and much incidental chamber and keyboard music. Eventually, he began to behave erratically, hallucinating conversations with imaginary people, and finally was consigned to a lunatic asylum. the Katerinky Lunatic Asylum in Prague, from which he was never discharged, and where he died on May 12th 1884.

From the 1870s onwards, he became a leading figure musically and an inspirational leader in the drive towards national independence.

In composing Ma Vlast, Smetana played an important, formative role in demarcating Bohemia as an autonomous geographical region, eventually becoming Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic. His own musically creative use of the region's unique traditions of folk music, legends, and myths helped massively to lead to Czech national autonomy and independence. Smetana gave musical voice to this both in his operas, chamber music, and in Ma Vlast, which has been central to that region’s sense of national identity ever since.

He did this despite his own personal struggles with health and illness. Throughout the 1870s, he struggled with increasing deafness. He had completely lost his hearing when he began composing Ma Vlast. Bryan Large (Smetana, 1970) comments about this painful and traumatic period of his life: “Slowly he learned to accept that he could follow his works only in his eye and brain. He persevered and produced one of the most significant works in his entire catalogue, not because of human suffering but through it. In Ma Vlast, he not only extols persevered and country but penetrates the very roots of Czech national feeling by celebrating everything that is dear to the people, their legends, landscapes, history, and the prophetic vision of their future.”

Smetana was influenced by Franz Liszt's pioneering symphonic poem genre. Ma Vlast underwent several iterations during its five years of development and, in its final form, consisted of six closely linked symphonic poems.

Each movement depicts an aspect of Bohemia’s countryside, history, or legends.

Movement 1: Vyshrad

This first movement, translated as The High Castle, describes the Vysehrad castle built on a mountain peak above Prague. According to legend, it was the fortress home of the first Bohemian kings. The opening harp cadenza ushers in this epoque of the heroic, evocative past. The first musical motif is associated with the rock itself, for Smetana and the Czech nation, the symbol of their historic past, full of triumphs and defeats.

The movement begins with the harp, evoking the sound of the bard Lumir, famous in Czech legends for refusing to sing in honour of the male victors in the Maiden’s war. In Czech history, this was a war in the eighth century fought for Bohemian independence, led by the female warrior Vlasta against their male oppressors. Their rebellion was initially successful but then finally defeated. The underlying musical motifs of the whole piece are introduced. Then a march theme is introduced, evoking associations with it being attacked and successfully defended, then finally falling into ruin. The movement subsides into a quiet resignation, and then the harp theme evokes the haunting beauty of the castle, now in ruins, in which state it can still be seen overlooking Prague.

Movement 2: Vltava

This is the most well-known of the six movements. It evokes the course of Bohemia’s greatest river. The movement follows the river's course through woods, meadows, and the Bohemian landscape. Smetana himself knew the river well. and hiked along it with friends when he was young. The river unites through the merging of two springs, then flows past the distant sounds of a hunt, then past a country wedding, where a farmer’s wedding is celebrated with a dance in the moonlight, evoked by a polka. After an interlude, Rusalkas, the water nymphs of Bohemian mythology, play in the moonlight. the stream then turns into a torrent, roaring over the rapids of St John above Prague, and then on past castles, palaces, and ruins. It then courses majestically through the capital city, before quietly vanishing into the distance.

Movement 3: Sarka

Having depicted history and the landscape, in the third movement, he turned to legend. He depicts the bloodthirsty revenge of the spurned maiden Sarka, who in the 'Maiden's War, led an uprising of women against the men who had seduced and deceived them.

The movement begins in total rage and uproar, mellows as she lulls her false lover and his troops into sleep and ends triumphantly as her troops slaughter to avenge her shame.

Movement 4 From Bohemia's Fields and Groves and trees of Bohemia

This is a bucolic interlude entitled Bohemia's Fields and Groves. It is a pastoral celebration of the woods, flowers,, and countryside of his beloved Bohemia. This is full of the sounds and beauty of the Bohemian countryside as he loved and knew it.

Movements 5 and 6: Tabor and Blanik

After four years in which he suffered much further pain and suffering, and completely lost his hearing, Smetana returned to write two further movements. These last two movements are linked and portray the fate of famous fourteenth century Hussite warriors, who founded a stronghold, and defended it to their death: the warriors of God. This is portrayed by a traditional hymn tune, robust, imposing, and steadfast; it seems to emerge from the mists of time and evokes the solemnity of the events unfolding, leading to their ultimate defeat. Tabor was the fifteenth-century stronghold of the Hussite rebellion, dedicated to Bohemian political and religious Independence.

The final movement, Blanik, refers to White Mountain, where Hussite warriors slumber through the centuries but are ready to rescue the homeland whenever it is endangered. Smetana wrote, "It is based on this melody, the Hussite chorale, that the resurrection of the Czech Nation, its future happiness and glory, will depend."

This whole masterwork IS the spirit of the Czech nation. It is played nationally at the Spring Prague festival and always at moments of national crisis. There is a famous incident that occurred in the second world war when the country suffered hugely from the occupation by the Nazis. Vaclav Talich and the Czech Philharmonic broadcast the piece performed live on the radio. In defiance of the Nazi troops who were overseeing the event, the audience broke into uproarious applause after every movement. There was also a communal outburst of the Czech National Anthem at the end. There was also a famous performance in 1989, after the Berlin Wall came down and there was a national sense of independence, free at last from the Russian embrace of the Iron Curtain. It has become an essential part of the repertoire of many concerts and festivals, being performed by numerous orchestras in countless performances. But for me, it can never be performed better than by a Czech orchestra and a Czech conductor in the country of its birth.