Czech (Bohemia)

Capital: Prague

Continent: Europe

Dvorák

Smetana

Bohemia (nowadays Czech Republic)

Smetana

, a composer who participated in the Czech failed rebellion against the Austro-Hungarian Empire that ruled Bohemia, began writing music which was affected by Czech folk music. His best-known work is the cycle of six symphonic poems

called "My country" (Ma vlast), and especially the poem "The Moldau"

(Vltava), about the Vlatva River, in which he paints his land in fascinating symphonic colors, combined with evident popular elements. His opera "the Bartered Bride" incorporates elements of Czech country music as well.

Vlata river - photograph courtesy of Jenn Langer

Just below a castle in the village of Nelahozeves

, 20 miles from Prague

, is the birth-place and now Museum of Antonín Dvorák

, Smetana's successor, who also created his "Slavonian Dances" under the influence of his homeland's dances. Among the national composers, Dvorák was the most prominent of symphony writers. He combined the Czech rhythms and melodies in his entire work, and showed such special interest in integrating folk music in symphonic pieces, that in the course of a several years' stay in America, he wrote pieces using popular native American and other American elements, including materials taken from the music of Afro-American slaves, as in Symphony no. 9 "From the New World"

and the no. 12 Quartet, "The American" quartet.

An autodidact composer who only became famous in his old age was the Moravian composer Janácek