The high spiritual plane of his life as it touched the personal and the accidental is revealed in the charming string quartet "From my Life". "My quartet," says Smetana, "is not merely formal playing with the tones and motifs, to show off the composer's skill, but it is the real picture of my life. The tone sounding for a long time in the Finale is that whistling sound of very high pitch, which had preceded my deafness. This little tone-picturing I dared to insert in this composition because it was so fateful for me." Smetana always found in the small ensemble of chamber music the proper interpreter for expression of his most intimate feelings. Thus the Trio, op. 15, was written to the memory of his little daughter, whose death brought to Smetana a great sorrow.
Smetana never accommodated his artistic principles to the taste of the public. He was too serious an artist to make a work pleasing to the masses. His eight operas – except The Bartered Bride – had to fight against a wall of misunderstanding; and were victorious, only after many years of dispute, because of their originality and vitality. A real genius, Smetana was much ahead of his time. The Bartered Bride (1866), Two Widows (1874), The Kiss (1876), The Secret (1878), and The Devil's Wall (1882) represent the highest style of the comic operas. Each of these works introduces a charming overture of a pure musical beauty, classical in form.
Dalibor (1868), a historical-romantic opera, became a favorite even outside its native land. The story is based upon a Czech folk-legend of the fifteenth century, which tells about a knight, Dalibor, who was a prisoner at the castle in Prague. He begged his jailor for a violin to lighten the heavy hours of his captivity. After a time, it is said, he played with such marvelous skill that the people came from far and wide to stand outside the prison walls and listen to the charming music. Likewise the libretto to the festival opera Libussa (1881) is drawn from the Czech history. This work marks the climax of Smetana's genius, and knowledge of it is indispensable to the student of Czech musical art. The overture to this opera is a masterpiece of form and festival mode. It begins with a trumpet call, developed in a tremendous gradation. Surely this work ought to be heard at least in a concert hall.
Considering the technical side, Smetana's works exhibit a great skill in the most problematic combinations of the polyphonic style flowing so naturally, that the hearer does not notice the difficulties solved with such exquisite grace and lightness. The melodies are fresh, original, and impressive, and enriched with Smetana’s harmonic peculiarities.
As a composer for the piano Smetana left a considerable number of works, especially Polkas, which he idealized in a very poetic form. His Polka No. 1, op. 7, was one of Liszt's favorites. Two cycles of piano compositions, of which the first bears the title Reves, and the other The Bohemian Dances, especially deserve the attention of the pianist. In this later work the Czech folk-melodies are preserved in very artistic and pianistic style. Smetana's best known composition, which is often played at concerts, is his etude By the Seashore, op. 17, a difficult but very effective piece of music snatching the spell of the Northern Sea.
In the last period of his creation Smetana expressed his love and admiration for his country and its history in poems in a cycle called My Country, consisting of six charming symphonic poems: Vyšehrad, the old castle, the seat of the first Bohemian ruler; Vltava, the river of Bohemia; Šarka, the Bohemian Amazon; From Bohemian Meadows and Woodlands, an idyll; Tabor and Blanik, which picture in tones the glorious past epoch of the Reformation. With this work the composer reached his goal. No greater tribute to his success is needed than Liszt's exclamation upon hearing of Smetana's death—"He was a genius!"
