Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/421

šehrad, celebrating the seat of the first Czech rulers. Smetana’s string quartette is a gem of chamber music. Among his piano compositions the best ones are the “Bohemian Dances” and the study called “On the Seashore”, written when he saw the ocean for the first time. Smetana was a very good pianist. He studied with Liszt, Heimar, and particularly the former remained his sincere friend all his life. He came to see him in Prague in 1871 and when he heard of Smetana’s death in 1884 he said: “A genius has gone”.

Unlike Smetana, who won admiration only after his death, Antonín Dvořák, the second greatest Czech composer, tasted the joy of the world’s fame during his lifetime. He was made Doctor of Music by the University of Cambridge; and the University of Prague gave him the honorary title of Doctor of Philosophy. His “Slavonic Dances” were the first ones to attract the world’s attention. His “Stabat Mater”, performed by the London Musical Society, created quite a sensation in 1892. Dvořák came to America for three years as head of the National Conservatory in New York. While here he wrote ten works. The first was the immortal “Symphony from the New World”, op. 96, sketched from Jan. 16th to May 25th. His other American compositions are the quartette F Major, op. 96; quintet F (flat) major, op. 97. The climax of his delightful chamber music works, Sonata in G major, op. 100, is known under the name “Indian Lament”, given it by F. Kreisler. Humoresque, op. 101, from which the seventh is the popular one, and a cantata “The American Flag” were composed in 1893. In June 1895 he returned to Prague and was made head of the Conservatory there. He died in 1904. His bequest contains more than 120 works.

Zdeněk Fibich, born in 1850, of an old forester family, grew up in the woods absorbing all their meditative poetry. He is little known in America, though his symphonies, symphonic poems, melodramas, and operas rank with the best musical works written in Europe during the last three decades of the 19th century. In his melodramas he tried to continue Wagner’s ideas about musical drama. The leading contemporary Czech musicians are Vítězslav Novák, Jos. Suk, Kovářovic, the director of the Bohemian Opera in Prague, K. Weiss, and Ostrčil.

The Prague National Theatre, where a complete cycle of Dr. Antonín Dvořák’s operatic work is being prepared for the 25th anniversary of the great composer’s death—the commemoration will take place in 1929—is preparing to produce in the near future his opera “Jakobin”. This work, the libretto of which was written by Mme. Červinková-Riegrová, the daughter of a prominent Czecho-Slovak statesman, the late Dr. Fr. Rieger, ranks among the most delightful and successful of Czech operas. It was written in 1889, just previous to Dvořák’s brilliant successes on English soil both as composer and as conductor. Dvořák was at the full strength of his creative ability when “Jakobin” was written and its libretto, whose plot is laid ina small Czech township and among whose characters we find the figure of a hearty old music-teacher, stimulated Dvořák on account of the rich store of memories of his own youth. His creation of this opera has, as a result, retained an old-world fragrance of appeal, and is characterized by freshness, almost light-opera joyousness and astonishing depth of feeling. Exquisite gems of melody and lavish musical color are the pronounced characteristics of this particular score of Dvořák’s. Among the cast of the opera, which is being produced under the direction of the director, Mr. Otakar Ostrčil, is the well-known bass, Mr. Vilém Zítek, who, in the role of the old count, has an aria in the third act which is among the most charming of all of Dvořák’s inspirations.