Musicologica Olomucensia

As for the artists of the Romantic era in common, a characteristic unity of myth and reality is symptomatic for Bedřich Smetana, the founder of the modern Czech music. The specific idiom of this unity in Smetana´s work has been formed by the very need to restore the Czech nation in the meantime of the Czech national renaissance. The specificity can´t be denied the plots of Smetana´s work and his personal artistic style either. The plots of his serious operas (The Brandenburgs in Bohemia, Dalibor, Libuše), of his symphonic poems from the cycle My Country (Vyšehrad, Šárka, Tábor, Blaník) and of his men choir Tři jezdci [Three Riders] are - taken from the Czech national history - inspired from the national myth of RKZ [Manuscripts from Králové Dvůr and Zelená Hora], the legend of Blaník´s Knights and the national tradition of the Hussites. As the second main pole of plots the reality of the restored Czech national social life is to be acknowledged, in the village (the comic operas The Bartered Bride and Kiss, the men choir Rolnická [Peasants], in a small town (comic opera The Secret), in a Czech saloon (comic opera Two Widows) etc. There is a characteristic mixing of both poles of plots (e. g. in "Rêves", the cycle of six characteristic pieces for piano) and an apotheosis of the nature of Czech countryside (Vltava and From Bohemian Fields and Forests in My Country, the duets for violin and piano Z domoviny [From the native Country], Přívětivá krajina [An Affable Country] from the cycle The Sketches op. 5) etc. An idiomatic unity of myth and reality is one of the most characteristic features of Smetana´s personal artistic style either. His "historical romanticism" and "romantic realism" stand neither against nor separately but pervade each other. The "romantic realism" or "realistic romanticism" as a term is with Smetana not a curious nonsens. Smetana does romantically idealize the Czech nature and the Czech man of his time in his real regional activities (Czech folk song, dances, festivities and rituals, the s. c. "living images" and so on). And on the contrary, he applies the national myth in the form it concretely functioned in social reality of his time. The formal adaptability and suppleness of the myth, which was so convenient for Wagner´s creation of the "Musikdrama", showed in a similar way useful for Smetana´s creation of a new type of "Symphonic poem" without any literary text model merely on the basis of a pure musical dramaturgy. And a suitable scaling of the "ideal" and "real" poles has inspired Smetana - after Mozarts "drama giocoso" - to work out a new type of comic operas which could be named "gioco drammatico".