String Quartet No. 1 (Smetana)

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String Quartet No. 1 (Smetana)

String Quartet No. 1 ("From My Life",in Czech

Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czech people worldwide....
: "Z mého života") in E minor

E minor

E minor is a musical minor scale based on the note E, consisting of the pitches E , F? , G , A , B , C , and D . The harmonic minor scale contains a D? ....
, written in 1876

1876 in music

Events * February 24 - Incidental music composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt premieres.* August 16 - Richard Wagner's Siegfried debuts in Bayreuth Festspielhaus...
, is a four-movement Romantic

Romantic music

In music, romanticism is a term, often considered misleading, and concept derived from literature traditionally defined by attributes including, "interest in nature, medieval chivalry, mysticism, [and] remoteness [ Social alienation and Solitude]"....
chamber composition by the Czech

Czech people

Czechs are a West Slavs people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries....
composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, usually in the medium of musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music....
Bedrich Smetana

Bedrich Smetana

Bedrich Smetana was a Czechs composer, one of the most significant that his country has ever produced. He is best known for his symphonic poem The_Moldau#Vltava , the second in a cycle of six which he entitled M? vlast , and for his opera The Bartered Bride....
.

r the deaf Smetana moved in 1876 from Prague

Prague

Prague is the Capital and World's largest cities of the Czech Republic. Its official name is Hlavn? mesto Praha, meaning Prague, the Capital City....
to Jabkenice

Jabkenice

Jabkenice is a village in Central Bohemian Region, Czech Republic. It is located at around . Composer Bedrich Smetana lived here from 1875 until his death....
, he hoped, that his handicap wouldn't be permanent. In autumn of that year he began to compose a new, important work. It was to be the composer's intimate confession, a work depicting in notes the course of his life "...

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String Quartet No. 1 ("From My Life",in Czech
Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czech people worldwide....
: "Z mého života") in E minor
E minor

E minor is a musical minor scale based on the note E, consisting of the pitches E , F? , G , A , B , C , and D . The harmonic minor scale contains a D? ....
, written in 1876
1876 in music

Events * February 24 - Incidental music composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt premieres.* August 16 - Richard Wagner's Siegfried debuts in Bayreuth Festspielhaus...
, is a four-movement Romantic
Romantic music

In music, romanticism is a term, often considered misleading, and concept derived from literature traditionally defined by attributes including, "interest in nature, medieval chivalry, mysticism, [and] remoteness [ Social alienation and Solitude]"....
chamber composition by the Czech
Czech people

Czechs are a West Slavs people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries....
composer
Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, usually in the medium of musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music....
Bedrich Smetana
Bedrich Smetana

Bedrich Smetana was a Czechs composer, one of the most significant that his country has ever produced. He is best known for his symphonic poem The_Moldau#Vltava , the second in a cycle of six which he entitled M? vlast , and for his opera The Bartered Bride....
.

Background
After the deaf Smetana moved in 1876 from Prague
Prague

Prague is the Capital and World's largest cities of the Czech Republic. Its official name is Hlavn? mesto Praha, meaning Prague, the Capital City....
to Jabkenice
Jabkenice

Jabkenice is a village in Central Bohemian Region, Czech Republic. It is located at around . Composer Bedrich Smetana lived here from 1875 until his death....
, he hoped, that his handicap wouldn't be permanent. In autumn of that year he began to compose a new, important work. It was to be the composer's intimate confession, a work depicting in notes the course of his life "... using four instruments speaking among themselves in something like a friendly circle".

The composition was finished on 29 December 1876, ideological conception and the features of individual movements Smetana formulated in a letter to his friend Josef Srba.

It was given a private premiere in 1878 in Prague with Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Dvorák

Anton?n Leopold Dvor?k was a Czechs composer of Romantic music, who employed the idioms and melodies of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia....
as violist, and its public premiere took place on 29 March 1879, played by Ferdinand Lachner, Jan Pelikán, Josef Krehan and Alois Neruda.

It is semi-autobiographical and composed of sketches of parts of Smetana's life, as is suggested by its subtitle Z mého života ("From My Life"). Its notable features include a prominent viola
Viola

The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.The casual observer may mistake the viola for the violin because of their similarity in size, closeness in pitch range , and nearly identical playing position....
solo in the very beginning of the first movement, and a high, sustained harmonic
Harmonic

In acoustics and telecommunication, a harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the Signalling that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency....
E on the first violin in the last movement, which represents the ringing presage of his deafness in Smetana's ears (though the actual ringing was a chord of A).

The work was published in 1880 by Fr. Urbánek in Prague.

Structure
The cycle consists of four movements
Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession....
:

Allegro vivo appassionato
Allegro moderato à la Polka
Largo sostenuto
Vivace

The first movement is the expression of composer's inclination to the romantic ideals in life and in his music. In the second movement the polka
Polka

The polka is a lively Central European dance and also a musical genre of dancing music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in the Czech lands and is still a common genre in Swedish, Lithuanian, Czech Republic, Poles, Germans, Hungarian, Austrians, Russian, Slovenian and Slovakian folk...
style recalls the memories of his youth, happy and convivial. The third movement is of great emotional depth, it's an apotheosis to love in overcoming the adversity of fate and finding harmony in life. In the last movement composer describes the journey to understanding the real essence of national art, interrupted by disaster - the beginning of the deafness. The end is almost resigned, with only a small ray of hope for better future.

See also: List of compositions by Bedrich Smetana
List of compositions by Bedrich Smetana

Below is a List of compositions by Bedrich Smetana sorted by genre. B. numbers are from the catalogue by Franti?ek Barto?. T. numbers are from the 1893 catalogue by Karel Teige....

Footnotes

External links