How should we feel about avowedly “national” music? Remember, if you value “patriotism”, for instance, as all the presidential candidates are required to avow every hour, on the hour, you must respect patriotism in nations other than your own. Otherwise it’s not patriotism per se you value, but some kind of hegemony, cultural or political.
Smetana’s Ma Vlast constitutes the greatest orchestral score between Berlioz and Brahms. I don’t raise an eyebrow if you would like to correct that to “between Beethoven and Mahler”. And the jewel in the crown is “From Bohemia’s Woods and Valleys”.
Smetana composed his greatest work, the orchestral cycle Ma Vlast while being stone deaf. I am frequently asked how a composer can compose when he is deaf. It isn’t alchemy, it’s training.
I do not anticipate having time in class to discuss Smetana’s Trio in g minor or Dvorak’s late folk/fairy tale opera “The Devil and Kate” but I’d like to recommend these fine pieces to my class, and of course my general readership as well.
The Dates I would like to use for Smetana Wk. 1 should be as follows: Macbeth and the Witches, 1859, Brandenburgers in Bohemia, 1864, Bartered Bride, 1866, Rev. 1869, Dalibor, 1867, Libuse, 1872. I lazily asked Bonnie to put in dates for Smetana, and I think she found first performance and or revision dates. I will change it in the on-line syllabus, but the handouts tomorrow will need to be adjusted. Printing materials for use in class may prove problematical for a while, there have been significant protocol changes in the Graham School hand-out printing operations, to which I’ll need to adjust, so online materials could very well be more up to date than actual handouts. Macbeth and the Wiches as well as Brandenburgers in Bohemia will be included tomorrow. That stuff is too good to lose!
The orchestral version of “Macbeth and the Witches’ is, according to Brian Large, made by somebody named Otakar Jeremias. David’s research is correct, unsurprisingly! The orchestration is brilliant in the extreme. Nevertheless, the novelty of the piece is not primarily due to the orchestration.
Smetana: Macbeth and the Witches; Dvorak: Prelude to Spectre’s Bride, The Water Goblin, and The Hussites, Prague Symp.With Smetacek, Czech Phil with Chalarala, on Urania.
John Gibbons