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Zdenek Fibich |
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Zdeněk Fibich (IPA: [ˈzdɛɲɛk ˈfɪbɪx]) (December 21, 1850 – October 15, 1900) was a Czech composer of classical music, including chamber works (including two string quartets, a piano trio, piano quartet and a quintet for piano, strings and winds), symphonic poems, three symphonies, at least seven operas, the most famous probably The Bride of Messina; melodramas including the substantial trilogy Hippodamia, liturgical music including a mass - a missa brevis; and a large cycle (almost 400 pieces, from the 1890s) of piano works called Moods, Impressions and Reminiscences among other works. The piano cycle served as a diary of sorts of his love for a piano pupil. He was born in Vseborice (Seborice) near Caslav. That Fibich is far less known than either Dvorak or Smetana can explained by the fact that Fibich lived during rise of Czech nationalism within the Habsburg empire. And while Smetana and Dvorak gave themselves over entirely to the national cause consciously writing Czech music with which the emerging nation strongly identified, Fibich’s position was more ambivalent. That this was so was due to the background of his parents and to his education. Fibich’s father was a Czech forestry official and the composer’s early life was spent on various wooded estates of the nobleman for whom his father worked. His mother, however, was an ethnic German Viennese. Home schooled by his mother until the age of 9, he was first sent to a German speaking gymnasium in Vienna for 2 years before attending a Czech speaking gymnasium in Prague where he stayed until he was 15. After this he was sent to Leipzig where he remained for three years studying piano with Ignaz Moscheles and composition with Salomon Jadassohn and Ernst Richter. Then, after the better part of a year in Paris, Fibich concluded his studies with Vincenz Lachner (the younger brother of Franz and Ignaz) in Mannheim. Fibich spent the next few years living with his parents back in Prague where he composed his first opera Bukovina, based on a libretto of Karel Sabina, the librettist of the Bartered Bride. At the age of 23, he married (a Czech) and took up residence in the Lithuanian city of Vilnius where he had obtained a position of choirmaster. After spending two personally unhappy years there (his wife and newly born twins both died in Vilnius), he returned to Prague in 1874 and remained there until his death in 1900. Hence Fibich, in contrast to either Dvorak or Smetana, was the product of two cultures, German and Czech. He had been given a true bi-cultural education. And during his formative early years, he had lived in Germany, France and Austria in addition to his native Bohemia. He was perfectly fluent in German as well as Czech. All of these factors were important in shaping his outlook and approach to composition. And this outlook was far broader than that of Smetana and Dvorak, who in their maturity, exclusively took up the Czech cause and never let it fall. Such an approach was too narrow and constricting for a man like Fibich, trained at the great Leipzig Conservatory by colleagues and students of Mendelssohn and Schumann; too narrow for a man who had sojourned in Paris and Vienna; a man who understood that German, along with French, was clearly one of the leading languages of Europe. And Fibich could plainly see that writing opera and vocal works (his main areas of interest) in Czech would limit their appeal. What he did not appreciate was that writing such works in German would profoundly affect the way in which he and his music were regarded by Czechs. In his instrumental works, Fibich generally wrote in the vein of the German romantics, first falling under the influence of Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann and later Wagner. It seems, that like Tchaikovsky, Fibich did not wish to write music that merely sounded nationalistic, but unlike Tchaikovsky, for the most part, Fibich succeeded. And therein lies the reason that Fibich has never been held in the same regard by his countrymen as either Dvorak and Smetana or even Janacek. There is no denying that during his first thirty years, Fibich identified more with German culture than Czech. He preferred the German form of his first name Zdenko, rather than the Czech Zdenek, and insisted that it appear on his published works. His early operas and close to 200 of his early songs are in German. These works along with his symphonies and chamber music won considerable praise from German critics if not from Czechs. However, his reputation abroad began to fade when the international public began to clamor for the exotic sounding Czech music his rivals were composing. The public no longer wished to hear works from a Czech composer, which no matter how well-crafted or ingenious, nonetheless did not sound particularly slavic. Having said all this, it would be unfair to omit that the bulk of Fibich’s operas are in Czech, although many are based on subjects from non-Czechs such as Shakespeare, Schiller and Byron. Nor is it fair to state that his music never sounds Czech. It just does not often sound obviously so. Perhaps in his chamber music, more than anywhere else, Fibich makes use of Bohemian folk melodies and dance rhythms such as the Dumka. Lastly, it must be noted that Fibich was the first to write a Czech nationalist tone poem (Zaboj, Slavoj a Ludek) which served as the inspiration for Smetana’s Ma Vlast. He was also the first to use the polka in a chamber work (his quartet in A), again serving as an example for the older Smetana. There is a Fibich Society which has organized projects such as Hudec's Thematic Catalog below, and much else. Bibliography
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