Smetana Ma Vlast (Vltava)

Texture:

• Follows different parts of the river throughout its journey through Bohemia

• Begins with unusual focus on interlocking and overlapping flute melodies to represent the flow of the river, gives the music a programmatic feel

• Polyphony within an otherwise homophonic texture created from these flute parts showing further influence of Bach and the Romantic period

Harmony:

• Starts in Em, melody implies E Aeolian harmony

• By bar 13 it reaches a more diatonic harmony

• Scale degree of 1 - 5 at the beginning in flute - then 1 - 7 then 1 - octave 1 - interlocking flute with Em chord all throughout the bass

• Partly modal but mostly diatonic - b6 and b7 - only influenced by folk music

• Key changes to relative major but keeps with a modal melody - being harmonised in a diatonic way but with a modal melody

• Still a conventional harmony

• It is triadic almost throughout, occasionally using 7th and diminished 7th chords: unusual for the romantic time, especially after Lizt’s crazy display of chromaticism

Mannheim influences/Commissioned Works:

• Much simpler in comparison to Liszt’s Faust symphony, the relative simplicity of this symphony harkens back to the traditional approach, written purely for pleasure instead of a more academic exercise.

• This piece begins with two interweaving flute lines, showing increased use of wind instruments during the period.

• This is a tone poem which describes how the Moldau river weaves through the Czech countryside before reaching Prague but it also tells a larger story about Smetana’s homeland and his patriotism towards it. This shows how where once music had the express purpose of entertaining the very wealthy, now, compositions can be used to display extra-musical content, such as narratives and emotions. This can be evidenced by how Smetana makes use of Czech folk techniques such as modal tonality and pastiche of folk tunes.

Extra-musical influences:

• Smetana wasn’t the most popular in terms of the world but he was very popular with his bohemian audience.

• Used different musical techniques to paint pictures of his homeland e.g. oscillating semiquavers to represent flowing rivers.