Bedřich Smetana - Životopis – Kosatík Pavel (2024)

In the anniversary year of Czech music, we commemorate the birth of composer Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884). Even children in school learn about him, that he laid the foundations of Czech national music; this has been a cliché repeated for generations. Pavel Kosatík, through studying sources, concluded that while there may be enough facts about Smetana available, we have not sufficiently reflected on them in light of our current needs. The author disagrees with the main, most commonly presented thesis of Smetana as merely the founder of Czech music. He sees him as a representative of European music. He believes that world music did not begin to emerge in our country only with Antonín Dvořák, but already with Bedřich Smetana. It was just that it was not yet able to reach the world during his time, and perhaps with the theory of his solely Czech music, this was not sufficiently considered. It is never too late to start correcting things, and the right moment for that may be right now. It is a pity if the world knows only The Bartered Bride, Vltava, and the string quartet From My Life from Smetana. Works like Dalibor, The Kiss, and The Two Widows, the entire Má vlast, the cycle of 'Swedish' symphonic poems, and also a number of brilliant compositions written for piano equally belong to the world. Let us appreciate Bedřich Smetana more. Let us bring him from the realm of awareness into consciousness. And then into...