Má vlast (traditionally translated as My Country or more literally My Fatherland) is a set of six symphonic poems composed between 1874 and 1879 by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana. While it is often presented as a single work in six movements, and outside of Vltava almost universally recorded that way, the individual pieces were conceived as a set of individual works.
In these works Smetana combined the symphonic poem form pioneered by Franz L...
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Má vlast (traditionally translated as My Country or more literally My Fatherland) is a set of six symphonic poems composed between 1874 and 1879 by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana. While it is often presented as a single work in six movements, and outside of Vltava almost universally recorded that way, the individual pieces were conceived as a set of individual works.
In these works Smetana combined the symphonic poem form pioneered by Franz Liszt with the ideals of nationalistic music which were current in the late nineteenth century. Each poem depicts some aspect of the countryside, history, or legends of Bohemia.
The first poem, Vyšehrad (The High Castle), composed from the end of September until 18 November 1874 and premiered on 14 March 1875, describes the Vyšehrad castle in Prague which was the seat of the earliest Czech kings. During the summer of 1874, he began to go deaf, and this became total quite quickly; he woke on the morning of 20 October to find himself completely...
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