Zdeněk Fibich (Czech pronunciation: [ˈzdɛɲɛk ˈfɪbɪx]), born on December 21, 1850, in Všebořice and died on October 15, 1900, in Prague, was a Czech composer who created classical music. His works include chamber music (such as two string quartets, a piano trio, a piano quartet, and a quintet for piano, strings, and winds), symphonic poems, three symphonies, at least seven operas (including Šárka and The Bride of Messina), melodramas like the three-part series Hippodamia, liturgical music such as a short mass (called a missa brevis), and a large collection of 376 piano pieces titled Moods, Impressions, and Reminiscences from the 1890s. This piano cycle acted like a diary, showing his feelings for a student. One piece from the cycle became the basis for the short instrumental work Poème, which is the piece Fibich is most remembered for today.

Early life and education

Fibich is less well-known than Antonín Dvořák or Bedřich Smetana. This is because he lived during the rise of Czech nationalism in the Habsburg Empire. While Smetana and Dvořák dedicated themselves to supporting the national cause and created music that strongly connected with the emerging Czech nation, Fibich’s position was more uncertain. This was influenced by his parents and his education. Fibich’s father was a Czech forestry official, and Fibich spent his early years on wooded estates owned by the nobleman for whom his father worked. His mother, however, was an ethnic German from Vienna. She taught him to play the piano when he was six years old. He was homeschooled by his mother until he turned nine, then attended a German-speaking school in Vienna for two years before moving to a Czech-speaking school in Prague, where he studied until he was 15. After that, he went to Leipzig, where he studied piano with Ignaz Moscheles and composition with Salomon Jadassohn and Ernst Richter. He spent about a year in Paris before completing his studies with Vinzenz Lachner, the younger brother of Franz and Ignaz Lachner, in Mannheim. Later, Fibich lived with his parents in Prague, where he composed his first opera, Bukovina, based on a libretto by Karel Sabina, the same person who wrote the libretto for Smetana’s The Bartered Bride.

Personal life

At the age of 23, he married Růžena Hanušová and moved to live in Vilnius, Lithuania. He became a choirmaster there. After two difficult years in Vilnius, where his wife and twins died, he returned to Prague in 1874. He lived there until his death in 1900. In 1875, he married Růžena's sister, Betty Fibichová, an operatic contralto. He left her in 1895 to be with his former student and lover, Anežka Schulzová. His relationship with Schulzová was important for his art. She wrote the libretti for his later operas, including Šárka. She also inspired his work Moods, Impressions, and Reminiscences.

Career

Fibich received an education that included two cultures, spending his early years in Germany, France, Austria, and his home region of Bohemia. He could speak both German and Czech fluently. In his instrumental music, Fibich often followed the style of German romantic composers, initially influenced by Weber, Mendelssohn, and Schumann, and later by Wagner. His early operas and nearly 200 early songs were written in German. These works, along with his symphonies and chamber music, received praise from German critics but not from Czech critics. Most of Fibich’s operas were written in Czech, even though many were based on stories from non-Czech sources, such as those by Shakespeare, Schiller, and Byron. In his chamber music, Fibich frequently used Bohemian folk melodies and dance rhythms, like the dumka. Fibich was the first composer to create a Czech nationalist tone poem, Záboj, Slavoj a Luděk, which inspired Smetana’s Má vlast. He was also the first to use the polka in a chamber music piece, his quartet in A.

After returning to Prague in 1874, Fibich’s music faced strong criticism in Prague because of his support for Richard Wagner’s ideas about opera. While Smetana struggled later in his career for performing Wagner-style operas in Czech before a traditional audience, Fibich’s strong music criticism and his later operas, such as Hedy, Šárka, and Pád Arkuna, worsened the situation after Smetana’s death in 1884. Fibich and the music theorist Otakar Hostinský were excluded from the musical community at the National Theatre and Prague Conservatory, forcing Fibich to rely on his private composition studio. Despite this, the studio was respected, and many students, including Emanuel Chvála, Karel Kovařovic, Otakar Ostrčil, and Zdeněk Nejedlý, studied there. Nejedlý later became a well-known critic and politician. Much of the attention Fibich’s music received in the early 20th century was due to these students, especially Nejedlý’s efforts to correct what he believed were unfair treatments of Fibich. While this increased awareness of Fibich’s work, later scholars had to consider the influence of Nejedlý’s personal bias.

A Fibich Society has organized projects, including Vladimir Hudec’s Thematic Catalog, and other initiatives.

Works

Fibich's most famous work, Poème, originally began as a piano piece without a name (number 139 in D flat) in his collection Moods, Impressions and Reminiscences. He later used the same music in his symphonic idyll At Twilight. After Fibich's death, the violinist Jan Kubelik changed the piece and gave it the title Poème. This version has been published and recorded in many different forms. One version was called My Moonlight Madonna, which includes English lyrics written by Paul Francis Webster. In 1933, the melody was made popular with a new harmony by William Scotti.