Bedřich Smetana was a Czech composer who lived from 1824 to 1884. He wrote music about his homeland: its rivers, its forests, its legends, and its village dances. His best-known piece, The Moldau, follows a river from its source to the city of Prague. He wrote it after he had lost all his hearing. The Moldau is the best first piece for a child.
Quick facts
- Born: 1824, in Litomyšl, Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic
- Died: 1884, in Prague
- Era: Romantic
- Played: piano and violin
- Known for: The Moldau, the opera The Bartered Bride, and the string quartet “From My Life”
The life in short
Smetana’s father brewed beer for a living and played the violin for fun. Bedřich played in a string quartet at five and gave a piano concert at six.
His father wanted him to choose a steady trade. Smetana moved to Prague as a young man with almost no money and taught piano to pay for his own lessons in composition.
Bohemia was then ruled from Vienna, and German was the language of schools and offices. Smetana grew up speaking German. He learned to write Czech well only as an adult.
He spent five years working in Sweden as a conductor and teacher. When he came home in the 1860s, Prague was building a theater for plays and operas in the Czech language. Smetana became its conductor and wrote operas for it.
The Bartered Bride, a comedy set in a Czech village, was his great success. It is full of polkas and other country dances.
In 1874, at 50, he began to hear a high whistling in his ears. Within months, he could hear nothing at all. He had to give up conducting.
He did not give up composing. In the next five years, he wrote a set of six pieces for orchestra called My Homeland. The Moldau is the second of them. He never heard any of it played.
What the music sounds like
Smetana’s music sounds Czech. He used the rhythms of the polka and the furiant, a fast dance that switches between two beats and three. He seldom borrowed real folk tunes. He wrote his own in the same style.
He was a fine storyteller in sound. Listeners can follow a river, a hunt, or a wedding without a word of explanation.
Pieces to play first
The Moldau. Flutes begin as one small spring. Clarinets join as a second. The two streams meet, and the violins sing the broad river tune. The river passes a hunt with horns, a village wedding with a polka, and water spirits dancing in the moonlight. It crashes through rapids and flows past a castle into Prague. It lasts about 12 minutes.
Overture to The Bartered Bride. One of the fastest openings in opera. The strings chatter in quick notes, section after section.
Dance of the Comedians, from The Bartered Bride. Circus performers come to the village. The music races and tumbles.
Polka, from The Bartered Bride. A bouncing village dance.
Things to do together
Follow the river. Play The Moldau and name each scene as it passes: springs, river, hunt, wedding, moonlight, rapids, and castle. Draw the river on a long strip of paper with a picture for each scene.
Be the water. Start as a trickle with wiggling fingers. Grow into a river with waving arms. Crash through the rapids.
Find the real river. In Czech, the river is called the Vltava. Find it on a map and trace it north to Prague.
Hear what he heard. Smetana wrote a string quartet about his own life. Near the end, a violin holds one high, piercing note. That is the whistling he heard as he went deaf. Play that moment for an older child.
Composing without hearing
Smetana and Beethoven both wrote great music after they lost their hearing. They could do it because they heard the music in their minds. A composer reads a page of notes the way you read a page of words. Read Beethoven for kids. For more, see deaf and blind composers and how they wrote music.
The composers who followed
Smetana showed that Czech music could stand beside German and Italian music. A young viola player in his theater orchestra took the lesson to heart. His name was Antonín Dvořák. Read Dvořák for kids.
Print and play
Fill in a composer study notebook page for Smetana. Draw the river on a listening journal page. For more music with a story, read classical music that tells a story.
For his best-known piece, read The Moldau listening guide. For more composers by era, see classical composers for kids.
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This article is part of Classical composers for kids: a guide by era, from Vivaldi to Britten.
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Use it with your kids
Print a listening page, a practice chart, or a composer fact sheet. Or try a tool, such as the composer timeline or the piece picker.