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SEPTEMBER 28,
THE MUSIC TRADE
1918
REVIEW
Czech, or Bohemian, Music, Which Hitherto Has Been But Little Appreciated,
Is Now Coming Into Its Own, Due In Part to the Fact That the Myth
Concerning German Superiority in Music Has Been Effectively Exploded
It is an unfortunate fact that the German men-
tal poison gas so industriously pumped into our
national mentality for the last half century
should have so completely obscured the view we
ought to have had of the art and culture of the
Slavic nations. We are just beginning to wake
up to the fact that, by the majority of American
citizens, all art and all intellectuality were sup-
posed, till quite recently, to belong to Germany
and Austria; that all the Slavic world was no
more or less than a world of ignorant and filthy
foreigners, known indifferently as Bohunks,
Hunkies or Polaks. With the exception of Rus-
sian music, which some of us had heard in the
shape of Tschaikowisky's Pathetic Symphony
or the Russian Ballet, the tonal art of the Slavs
was scarcely known at all to the western world.
The same lamentable indifference was common
even in France and Great Britain, although
there, as with us, the craze for Tschaikowsky
went to the usually unhealthy lengths.
An, Old Civilization
Now, of course, the fact is that Slavic civili-
zation is much older than that of Germany. The
Slavic world includes not alone the Russians, but
also the Bohemians, their neighbors the Slo-
vaks, the inhabitants of the Austro-Hungarian
provinces of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, etc.,
along the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, and
the whole of Poland, besides the independent
state Serbia. The Slavic belt of Europe occu-
pies an eastern position which makes it a bar-
rier between western civilization and the Ori-
ent. It has always been therefore pre-eminently
a pioneer civilization, brave, hardy and roman-
tic; and its art has reflected this essential char-
acteristic always.
Bohemia
Consider for a moment the music of Bohemia.
This nation, during the Middle Ages, occupied
a position not only geographically, but cultur-
ally central. The University of Prague, at the
time of John Huss, was the most celebrated in
Kurope. Czech art, Czech literature and Czech
culture were extinguished for a time at the dis-
astrous battle of the White Mountain during the
Thirty Years' War (1620). For two hundred
years, nearly, Czech history remained unwrit-
ten; and indeed there was none to write. The
nation had virtually ceased to exist. Only a
peasantry, stolid as the ground itself, and as
immovable, remained.
National Revival
But in the early years of the nineteenth cen-
tury a new nationalism began to assert itself.
The ancient nobility was long since destroyed,
and the new culture, the revival of native Bohe-
mian Czech literature and art, may be said actu-
ally to have sprung from the peasantry itself.
The name of Smetana presents itself at once
as that of the first Bohemian composer who de-
liberately took his stand upon the native music
of his native land and erected the rude folk-
song into a great art. Smetana was born in
1824, studied at Prague and began his career as
an independent teacher of music in that city.
After some years in Sweden, as conductor at
Gothenberg, he returned home in 1866 and from
then till his death, in 1884, never left Prague.
He was for several years from the time of its
foundation in 1866 chief conductor of the fa-
mous National Theatre of Prague, which has
been the center of national Bohemian drama and
music and an agent of great potency for the
spread of Czech nationalism.
Smetana has written some very wonderful
music, some of which is available in music rolls,
but unfortunately far too little. Perhaps the
most thoroughly splendid of all his compositions
is the great symphonic poem "My Fatherland,"
cast in six sections, one of which, "Vltava," de-
picts the rise, course and grandeur of the great
river whose name it bears and which is the
national Bohemian river par excellence, al-
though western peoples know it better, unfor-
tunately, under the German corruption of its
name "Moldau." The Q R S Co. have made
a very fine arrangement of this magnificent tone-
poem and the writer has had the extreme pleas-
ure of playing it in recital from this roll.
"The Bartered Bride"
Smetana's other well-known work, the opera
"Prodana Nevesta," or "The Bartered Bride,"
has been given on the stage of almost every
opera house in the world, not forgetting, of
course, those of New York and Chicago. It
is a charming comic opera in which the pic-
turesque and happy lives of the Bohemian
peasants are beautifully and most tunefully set
forth. One of the lovely Bohemian national
dances, a sort of polka measure, was made by
Smetana almost as well known in this opera
as were the Dumka and Furiant by his suc-
cessor, Dvorak. Selections from "The Bartered
Bride" may be obtained on music rolls.
The Works of Dvorak
Antonin Dvorak, pupil and successor of Sme-
tana, made a greater stir in the world and
became especially well known to Americans
through his stay in this country as head of the
National Conservatory of Music in New York.
During this time (1892-1895) Dvorak composed
the well-known and famous "New World"
Symphony and the "American" quartets for
strings. These made him very well known, espe-
cially the Symphony, of which the lovely Largo
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and the charming Negro melody fragments of
the first movement have delighted countless
thousands of hearers.
Although the New World Symphony was writ-
ten in this country, and Negro folk tunes were
used in constructing its main themes, still it is
thoroughly Bohemian music, and cannot be con-
sidered as anything else. Nevertheless, on ac-
count of its hybrid origin, it may be regarded
as the best possible introduction to Bohemian
musical art for an American music-lover. For-
tunately it is available in music rolls, and for-
tunately also its style is so engaging and at-
tractive that it captivates most person's at the
first hearing. Here is no heaviness, none of
that dreadful German stiffness and dulness
which give one such feelings of gloom and in-
digestion; feelings we once supposed were awe
over the unfathomable profundity of German
art; but which we now perceive to be far more
a matter of unfathomable stupidity. Dvorak is
engaging from the first note to the last. He
transports us, in this symphony, to a veritable
fairy world which at one moment gives us de-
licious glimpses of the cabins and the cotton-
fields, and at another, like the magic carpet of
the East, whisks us away to one of those dark
and romantic lakes, tree-covered and mountain-
crowned, that gem the forests of Bohemia. By
all means let every music^lover get rolls of the
"New World" Symphony and make them his
own.
"Humoresque"
Dvorak has obtained a still greater renown
in the popular mind, perhaps, by his famous
"Humoresque," which has been played, and
whistled, and pounded and scraped and gener-
ally tortured for fifteen years, ever since a cer-
tain violinist arranged it for his fiddle and began
to play it as an encore at his recitals. This is,
however, only one of a whole set of these
humoresques, which are not at all humorous in
the ordinary sense of that term, at least to an
American. Yet they are all lovely things and
the true music-lover will wish to get acquainted
with them. Music roll manufacturers have ar-
ranged several of them, and the Universal,
Aeolian, Angelus and other catalogs will be
found to offer a selection. It will be to many
a great relief to find some new "humoresques."
All, by the way, are founded on real Bohemian
folk music.
Slavonic Dances
The Slavonic dances of Dvorak are also mag-
nificent, dashing little pieces, full of Slavic fire
and splendor. There are several arrangements
in the various music roll catalogs, and music-
lovers will welcome them one and all.
This very rough sketch of only two of Bo-
hemia's great musicians may serve to whet
the appetite of the music-lover who wishes to
know some more of the thought and culture
of a nation which, through the recognition of
its Czecho-Slovak army and National Council
by the Allied Governments, as friends and co-
belligerents, is once more becoming known to
the stern world as exponents of a culture which
centuries of Germanizing has failed to suppress.
Strange, is it not, that German culture always
tries, but never manages, to suppress that of
the races it tramples down? Long live the
Czecho-Slovak nation—Bohemia 1
Among the visitors to the local trade this
week was George Ames, of the United States
Music Co., Chicago, the well-known music roll
manufacturers.