Bedrich Smetana, the founding father of Bohemian-Czech nationalist music, was the son of a German-speaking master brewer. Born on 2 March 1824 in the town of Litomysl in Bohemia - which, then and throughout his lifetime, was under Austrian rule - he received his first musical instruction from his father, who played the violin. His pianistic gifts were soon developed by other teachers, but his father insisted that the boy should have a thorough academic education, which was entirely carried out in German: Smetana did not learn Czech until he was an adult. (In this respect his story resembles that of Sibelius, Finland's greatest composer, who grew up in a Swedish-speaking household and learned Finnish by studying it.) At 16, Smetana heard Liszt play in Prague and decided to become a professional musician. While studying in the Bohemian capital, he taught piano to the children of Count Leopold Thun, and he met Robert and Clara Schumann and possibly also Berlioz. In 1848 he founded a music institute in Prague, but the school was not a success. In 1856 Smetana learned of an opening for a piano teacher in Ga.teborg and immediately left to investigate the opportunities in the Swedish city. A week after his arrival he gave a recital which was well received, and less than two months later he opened a music school that attracted more pupils than he could enrol. Despite three years of success in Ga.teborg as composer and conductor as well as piano teacher and pianist, Smetana decided to return to his homeland after his wife, Katerina Kol! rov! , became seriously ill. She died of tuberculosis, en route, in Dresden in 1859. They had been married for ten years; three of their four daughters died in early childhood, and Smetana composed his superb Piano Trio in response to the death in 1855 of one of them. Smetana's most serious efforts as a composer, however, began after his return to Prague in 1861, by which time he had become a wholehearted Czech nationalist. Most of his important compositions mirrored this passion. The Bartered Bride (1866), the second of his eight operas, is full of Czech folk elements and rhythmic verve. Although it is the only one to have maintained enduring international success, within his own country several of Smetana's other operas continue to form a central part of the repertory. And in recent years, productions of his operas, including the three based on Czech history or legend, have become increasingly frequent abroad, especially in Britain. Among the works that busied Smetana during the first half of the 1870s, the most important one was a cycle of six symphonic poems, collectively titled M! vlast (My Country), which the Smetana expert John Clapham described as the composer's "vast instrumental monument to his nation". Smetana had been encouraged by Liszt, with whom he had become friendly, to adopt the descriptive symphonic poem format; Smetana may have lacked Liszt's harmonic and structural originality, but many of his works are fresher and more naturally expressive than those of his mentor - which may explain why Liszt's once-popular tone poems have all but dropped out of the repertoire while some of Smetana's (The Moldau above all) have kept their place. Indeed, the whole of M! vlast (My Country)is heard and recorded more frequently now than ever before. By 1879, when Smetana completed M! vlast (My Country), he was losing his hearing and having trouble keeping his balance. The cause was syphilis, which eventually destroyed his health completely. In 1876 he composed the remarkable String Quartet subtitled From My Life, in which he depicts in vivid musical terms the internal sensation of his growing deafness. His lack of even moderate economic success, along with his deteriorating relations with his second wife, Bettina Ferdinandov! , whom he had married in 1860, did not help matters. By 1883 he could no longer remember what he had written down, making composing extremely slow and difficult. Neverthless in that year he finished a second string quartet in March, and in September an introduction and polonaise for orchestra, part of a projected suite entitled Prague Carnival. By the end of the year his intellectual capacities, too, had begun to deteriorate, and the following April he became so violent that he had to be taken to Prague's lunatic asylum, where he died on 12 May 1884. A great crowd attended Smetana's funeral at the Tyn Church and burial at the Vysehrad cemetery, but his crucial importance in the history of his country's music was not properly recognized until many years after his death. Harvey Sachs Biographical notes (c) 1996, by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg A selection of major works: Orchestral: M! vlast (My Country), Hakon Jari, Prague Carnival, Richard III, Wallenstein's Camp Chamber: 2 String Quartets (No. 1 From My Life), Piano Trio Instrumental solo: Bagatelles and Impromptus, 14 Czech Dances, Polkas etc. Vocal: Songs Stage works: Operas: The Bartered Bride, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, Dalibor, The Devil's Wall, The Kiss, Libuse, The Two Widows