page_title: Bedřich Smetana
section_title: Illness and death
hierarchical_section_title: Bedřich Smetana / Biography / Illness and death
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of Smetana's grave monument at the National Cemetery in the Vyšehrad fortress, Prague
context_page_description: Bedřich Smetana was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style that became closely identified with his country's aspirations to independent statehood. He has been regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his opera The Bartered Bride and for the symphonic cycle Má vlast, which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer's native Bohemia. It contains the famous symphonic poem "Vltava", also popularly known by its German name "Die Moldau".
  Smetana was naturally gifted as a composer, and gave his first public performance at the age of 6. After conventional schooling, he studied music under Josef Proksch in Prague. His first nationalistic music was written during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participated. After failing to establish his career in Prague, he left for Sweden, where he set up as a teacher and choirmaster in Gothenburg, and began to write large-scale orchestral works.
  In the early 1860s, a more liberal political climate in Bohemia encouraged Smetana to return permanently to Prague.
context_section_description: In 1879, Smetana had written to a friend, the Czech poet Jan Neruda, revealing fears of the onset of madness. By the winter of 1882–83 he was experiencing depression, insomnia, and hallucinations, together with giddiness, cramp and a temporary loss of speech. In 1883 he began writing a new symphonic suite, Prague Carnival, but could get no further than an Introduction and a Polonaise. He started a new opera, Viola, based on the character in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, but wrote only fragments as his mental state gradually deteriorated. In October 1883 his behaviour at a private reception in Prague disturbed his friends; by the middle of February 1884 he had ceased to be coherent, and was periodically violent. On 23 April his family, unable to nurse him any longer, removed him to the Kateřinky Lunatic Asylum in Prague, where he died on 12 May 1884.
  The hospital registered the cause of death as senile dementia. However, Smetana's family believed that his physical and mental decline was due to syphilis. An analysis of the autopsy report, published by the German neurologist Dr Ernst Levin in 1972, came to the same conclusion. Tests carried out by Prof. Emanuel Vlček in the late 20th century on samples of muscular tissue from Smetana's exhumed body provided further evidence of the disease. However, this research has been challenged by Czech physician Dr Jiří Ramba, who has argued that Vlček's tests do not provide a basis for a reliable conclusion, citing the age and state of the tissues and highlighting reported symptoms of Smetana's that were incompatible with syphilis.
  Smetana's funeral took place on 15 May, at the Týn Church in Prague's Old Town. The subsequent procession to the Vyšehrad Cemetery was led by members of the Hlahol, bearing torches, and was followed by a large crowd. The grave later became a place of pilgrimage for musical visitors to Prague. On the funeral evening, a scheduled performance of The Bartered Bride at the National Theatre was allowed to proceed, the stage draped with black cloth as a mark of respect.
  Smetana was survived by Bettina, their daughters Zdeňka and Božena, and by Žofie. None of them played any significant role in Smetana's musical life. Bettina lived until 1908; Žofie, who had married Josef Schwarz in 1874, predeceased her stepmother, dying in 1902. The younger daughters eventually married, living out their lives away from the public eye. A permanent memorial to Smetana's life and work is the Bedřich Smetana Museum in Prague, founded in 1926 within the Charles University's Institute for Musicology. In 1936 the museum moved to the former Waterworks building on the banks of the Vltava, and since 1976 has been part of the Czech Museum of Music.
  The asteroid 2047 Smetana was named in his honour.
caption: Left side of Smetana's grave monument.
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