Musicologica Olomucensia

Bedřich Smetana´s String Quartet No. 2 (1882/83) is the dramatic finale of his autobiographical compositions. It starts where the String Quartet From my Life of 1876 ended and portrays the miserable condition of the composer suffering from deafness and progressive paralysis.
Following Smetana´s statement that "the form of each compostion is derived from its subject", the author examines the first movement of the quartet in order to find out how the programmatic idea is expressed by the musical structures. This very unusual movement cannot be grasped by conventional models of interpretation. The several sections of the form, rich of contrast, can be assigned to two different musical spheres: one of them comparatively strongly marked by melody and tonality, the other one melodically more confused and tonally vague. The former sphere is characterized by double tonality, oscillating between the poles of F and D. The latter, tonally non-centred sphere is based on four-tone- structures derived from diminished seventh chords. The structures of these nontonal sections are exceptional and anticipate the technique of dodecaphonic composing, shown in comparison to the Lyric Suite by Alban Berg.
On a semantic level the tonal sections of the movement prove by their motivic relation to the quartet From my Life to be a nostalgic recollection on the composer´s unspoilt days in the past. On the other hand, the nontonal sections, which were extremely progressive in their time, can be easily be understood as a symbol for Smetana´s increasing isolation from his environment. The way Smetana integrates the two obviously vastly divergent spheres of his composition with the help of similar structural elements does not only give clear evidence for his innovative power and high artistic level but is furthermore a shattering document of the composer´s fight against the inevitable progress of the fatal disease.