The Moldau

Bedrich Smetana (1902-1979)

Edited by Steven L. Rosenhaus

Videography by Vladimir Paje

Program Notes by Lucinda Mosher, Th.D.

A child-prodigy at the piano, Bedřich Smetana was well known in nineteenth-century Prague as a conductor, music critic, and composer. That third aspect of his professional life was his passion. The Moldau is the most beloved of five symphonic tone poems which he composed and premiered individually, then brought together as a set known as Má Vlast (My Homeland).

His intention is—through the unique and diverse sounds of the orchestra—to transport the listener the entire length of Bohemia’s longest river (which, like our own St Johns River, flows south-to-north). In Smetana’s time, his homeland was called Bohemia. It is now known at the Czech Republic. In the Czech language, its long and glorious river is called the Vltava. We’ll stick with the more familiar German name for it: the Moldau. Smetana begins his musical description of it with two flutes trading a rippling motif back and forth to evoke the two springs that provide the Moldau’s headwaters. Soon, a pair of clarinets contribute to the burbling.

The entrance of the strings signal the expansion of the waters into a navigable river. Listen for the elegant, swaying main theme. The brass interrupt: we are passing the ruins of an ancient castle. With a change in mood and meter, the music suggests folk-dancing as a farmer celebrates his wedding. The composer says that we’re also to imagine water sprites dancing in the moonlight! The swirling of the flutes return, followed by the main theme. The river is widening! But now the music turns ominous. Our boat must negotiate treacherous rapids. Safe on the other side, the main theme—now played grandly in a major key—carries us through the great city of Prague, then fades into the rippling motif with which we began: we’re to imagine the majestic waters losing their distinctiveness as the River Moldau merges with the River Elbe. Smetana’s tone-painting in The Moldau is all the more astounding when we realize that during the summer and autumn of 1874, Smetana rapidly lost his hearing. When he sat down to write it in late autumn of that year, he was profoundly deaf.