This is the view from the rock, Vyšehrad, of the Vltava as it leaves Prague and heads for its confluence with the Elbe; a panorama which – apart from the yacht marina – must have been familiar to Smetana and is the visual equivalent of the final bars of his tone-poem.
Click on ‘Comments’ below to read some fascinating research by Kevin into the bio/geographical confusion surrounding the sources of the Vltava.
Click on ‘Comments’ below to read some fascinating research by Kevin into the bio/geographical confusion surrounding the sources of the Vltava.
A very different sort of nationalism informs George Butterworth’s rhapsody, A Shropshire Lad. The work – a prelapsarian vision of rural England with the concomitant pain of the fall (of whatever sort) – is curiously prophetic of the composer’s own death on the Somme in 1916.
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We were invited this week to do a little research, if the fancy so took us, into some of the precise locations which inspired Smetana in his composition of "Vltava". Never one to be able to resist such a challenge, here are the results of my "geo-biographical enquiries":
ReplyDeleteFrom the course notes:
"The [Šumava Valley] countryside is divided by two fast-flowing streams -- the Vydra and the Otava, one warm, one cold."
From Smetana's programme note:
"The composition depicts the course of the river, from its beginning where two brooks, one cold, the other warm, join a stream..."
I think a bit of poetic licence must have been involved here -- or perhaps Smetana was just a little confused about his geography: probably a litte of both! Because although the Vltava does indeed begin in two branches, one "warm" and one "cold", the location here described by Smetana's friend Mořic Anger as having inspired the work, lies on another river.
The main source of the Vltava is a stream which rises on the eastern slope of Černá hora (the black mountain) near the village of Kvilda in Šumava (the Bohemian Forest). This stream, known as Teplá Vltava (the warm Vltava) is joined near Chlum, some 30 km to the southeast, by Studená Vltava (the cold Vltava) flowing down from a source near Haidmühle, over the border with Germany, in the Bavarian Forest. After continuing southeastwards and passing, nowadays, through the 48-km length of the artificially created Lake Lipno, the Vltava then turns northwards to flow towards Prague, some 165 km away as the crow flies.
The confluence which Anger describes Smetana contemplating is not, however, on the Vltava itself, but marks the beginning of one of its main tributaries, the 113-km long Otava. Čeňkova pila (Čeněk´s saw-mill), the spot 4 km southwest of Rejštejn which Anger and Smetana were visiting, is the point at which the Křemelná and Vydra streams combine to form the river Otava, which flows from there through Jihočeský kraj (the South Bohemian region) before finally joining the Vltava some 75 km south of Prague (direct distance). From Čeňkova pila the two mountain streams combine to form a river broad enough to carry timber and the mill was established here to saw the felled timber into planks prior to their being floated downriver. Today a hydro-electric station stands on the site.
A nice image of the confluence of the Křemelná (left) and Vydra (top) to form the Otrava is available at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Soutok_Vydry_a_Kremelne.jpg
The real source of the Vltava lies, it is true, no more than 12 km away from this point -- although the Vltava and Otava each flow separately for hundreds of kilometres before the two rivers eventually join. But there is no doubt in Anger's account that Čeňkova pila is where his friend Smetana was first inspired. In the sentence before the quotation included in our course notes he writes: "... tady vznikla první myšlenka, tady se zrodila jeho velkolepá Vltava."
In my own (no doubt ropy) translation: "... here arose the first thought, here was born his grand Vltava."