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Hanslick's Smetana and Hanslick's Prague

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Brodbeck
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Abstract

This article examines the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick's reception of the music of Bedřich Smetana during the 1880s and 1890s. In three case studies, it suggests that the critic's reviews are best understood in terms not of Smetana's Czech nationalism, but of Hanslick's German liberalism, and of the critic's memories of the youthful background he shared with Smetana in German-speaking yet nationally indifferent Vormärz Prague.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 134 , Issue 1 , 2009 , pp. 1 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Musical Association

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References

1 Petr Pithart, ‘Neklidný život pražských pomníků a soch’, Dějiny a politika: Eseje a úvahy z let 1977–1989 (Prague, 1990), 255–68 (p. 261), quoted in translation in Derek Sayer, The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (Princeton, NJ, 1998), 129.

2 Theobald Kretschmann, Tempi passati: Aus den Erinnerungen eines Musikanten, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1910–13), i, 94.

3 For a good general study of Taaffe's government, see William A. Jenks, Austria under the Iron Ring, 1879–1893 (Charlottesville, VA, 1965).

4 For a detailed discussion, see David Brodbeck, ‘Dvořák's Reception in Liberal Vienna: Language Controversy, National Property, and the Rhetoric of Deutschtum’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 60 (2007), 71–131 (pp. 75–97).

5 This group was generally known as the Radnitzy Quartet, after the name of the first violinist, Franz Radnitzky. Rounding out the ensemble were the second violinist August Siebert, the violist Anton Stecher, and Kretschmann as the cellist. All but Kretschmann were members of the Court Opera Orchestra at the time of the group's founding; Kretschmann himself was made a member of that orchestra in 1881. In later years Hans Kreuzinger replaced Radnitzky as the quartet's first violinist.

6 Kretschmann, Tempi passati, i, 122; ii, 243.

7 Eduard Hanslick, Neue freie Presse, 14 December 1880; repr. in idem, Concerte, Componisten, und Virtuosen der letzten fünfzehn Jahre, 1870–1885 (Berlin, 1886), 284–5. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. For the German original, see Appendix, item 1.

8 Pieter M. Judson, ‘Rethinking the Liberal Legacy’, Rethinking Vienna 1900, ed. Steven Beller (New York and Oxford, 2001), 57–79 (pp. 66–7).

9 Johann Nepomuk Berger, Zur Lösung der österreichischen Verfassungsfrage (Vienna, 1861), 19, quoted in translation in Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1981), 117.

10 Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2006), 15.

11 Jenks, Austria under the Iron Ring, passim; Robin Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy c.1765–1918: From Enlightenment to Eclipse (New York, 2001), 268–76.

12 The following discussion is largely based on Judson's account in Guardians of the Nation, 11–18.

13 See also Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (2nd, rev. edn, West Lafayette, IN, 2006), 66–8.

14 As David S. Luft has argued, because of Bohemia's long-standing special relationship to Austria and to German culture, dating back to the early history of the Holy Roman Empire, ‘Bohemia was a part of Austria politically, culturally, and intellectually in ways that Hungary and other areas of the Habsburg monarchy were not’. David S. Luft, ‘Austrian Intellectual History and Bohemia’, Austrian History Yearbook, 38 (2007), 108–21 (p. 117).

15 ‘Dieser Slave kennt gründlicher als mancher Deutsche seinen Beethoven’; Hanslick, in Neue freie Presse, 23 February 1892; repr. in Eduard Hanslick, Die moderne Oper, vii: Fünf Jahre Musik (1891–1895): Kritiken (3rd edn, Berlin, 1896), 190. ‘Die Symphonie trägt deutsches Gepräge und verrät die gute deutsche Schule, die Fibich am Leipziger Konservatorium durchgemacht’; Hanslick, in Neue freie Presse, 12 December 1893; repr. in Die moderne Oper, vii, 228.

16 Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, iii: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford and New York, 2005), 451–2.

17 Kretschmann had previously stepped into the breach by programming both Vyšehrad and Vltava for a concert of 16 November 1886, given by a small pickup orchestra in the intimate Bösendorfer Hall. Kretschmann's small band, which gave no fewer than 30 concerts during the 1886–7 season, routinely performed music by Czech composers, as well as by others who were unlikely to be heard at the Philharmonic; see Kretschmann, Tempi passati, ii, 54–63. The Philharmonic finally performed Vltava on 2 May 1887, but this came only as part of a special all-Slavic concert given in celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Slavischer Gesangverein. Hanslick left no review of either of these performances, and in all likelihood failed to attend either concert.

18 Detailed information regarding the orchestra's repertoire and concert programmes is provided in Richard Perger, Denkschrift: Zum Feier des fünfzigjährigen ununterbrochenen Bestandes der Philharmonischen Konzerte in Wien 1860–1910 (Vienna and Leipzig, 1910). Hanslick's reviews of the four works appeared in the Neue freie Presse, respectively on 4 March 1890 (repr. in Hanslick, Die moderne Oper, vi: Aus dem Tagebuche eines Musikers (Berlin, 1892), 300–4); 7 February 1893 (repr. in Die moderne Oper, vii, 222–4); 28 November 1893 (repr. ibid., 224–7); and 13 November 1894 (no reprint). For a brief discussion of Hanslick's reception of Má vlast, see Jaroslav Střítecký, ‘Eduard Hanslick und die tschechische Musik’, Festival Česká hudba / Musica bohemica: Problémy a metody hudební historiografie, ed. Rudolf Pečman (Brno, 1974), 85–93 (pp. 90–3).

19 ‘In unseren Tagen theils schwächlichen, theils raffinirten Musikmachens begrüßen wir mit Freude jede Schöpfung, die von einem echten, starken Talent stammt’ (Hanslick, in Neue freie Presse, 13 November 1894).

20 Michael Beckermann, ‘In Search of Czechness in Music’, 19th-Century Music, 10 (1986–7), 61–73 (p. 73).

21 Hanslick, in Neue freie Presse, 4 March 1890; for the German original of this passage, together with that of several additional passages quoted below, see Appendix, item 2. When the Philharmonic players performed Vltava for the subscription concerts for the second time, under Gustav Mahler's direction on 2 December 1900, Hanslick rehearsed the same objection; see Hanslick's review of the concert in Neue freie Presse, 4 December 1900.

22 Notably, Hanslick stood alone among Viennese reviewers in referring to the piece as Die Moldau; every other Viennese critic respected the Czech title under which the piece had been billed.

23 Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, iii, 447.

24 Hanslick could at least take some comfort in the knowledge that the Philharmonic subsequently billed Smetana's symphonic poems under their German titles only (Aus Böhmens Hain und Flur, Wyscherad and Scharka).

25 Eduard Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1894); this work first appeared in serialized form in the quarterly Deutsches Rundschau, 75 (1893). Hereafter I will quote from the modern edition: Eduard Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, ed. Peter Wapnewski (Kassel and Basel, 1987).

26 Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, ed. Wapnewski, 14–16; for the German original, see Appendix, item 3. As was customary for German-speakers at the time, Hanslick uses German orthography when giving the proper names of Czechs. Throughout this paper, I will retain the authors’ spellings in my quotations from the original sources, but provide the more modern Czech spellings in my translations.

27 Jitka Ludvová, ‘Několik pražských reálií k biografii Eduarda Hanslicka’, Miscellanea theatralia: Sborník Adolfu Scherlovi k osmdesátinám, ed. Eva Šormová and Michaelou Kuklovou (Prague, 2005), 379–90 (p. 379). This important article will appear in a German translation under the title ‘Einige Prager Realien zum Thema Hanslick’, Eduard Hanslick: Bericht zum Symposion zum Gedenken an seinen hundertsten Todestag, ed. Gernot Gruber et al. (Tutzing, in press); I am grateful to Christoph Clemens Landerer for supplying me with a copy of this version, and to Dr Ludvová for allowing me to make use of it in advance of publication. Also useful on Hanslick's early biography is Jitka Ludvová, Dokonalý antiwagnerián Eduard Hanslick (Prague, 1992), 1–36; eadem, ‘Zur Biographie Eduard Hanslicks’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, 37 (1986), 37–46; and Ines Grimm, Eduard Hanslicks Prager Zeit: Frühe Wurzeln seiner Schrift Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (Saarbrücken, 2003), 11–104.

28 As Derek Sayer has noted, in relation to the first half of the nineteenth century: ‘Bohemia's social divisions had been articulated as a contrast between a world language of culture, civility, and state, and a multiplicity of ignorant local vernaculars. The consolidation of written Czech [in the second half of the nineteenth century] transformed that axis of social difference into a dividing line between two national communities, each now identified and solidified by its own language.’ Sayer, The Coasts of Bohemia, 113.

29 Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, 18–23. The first chapter of Cohen's study, covering the period to 1861, is entitled ‘From Bohemians to Czechs and Germans’.

30 Bohemia was founded in 1828, Libussa in 1842. The patriotic significance of the names given to these organs is discussed in Jan Havránek, ‘The Development of Czech Nationalism’, Austrian History Yearbook, 3 (1967), 223–60 (p. 235).

31 On Josef Hanslik, see Hubert Reitterer, ‘Josef Adolf Hanslik als Bibliotheksbeamter und Satiriker’, Eduard Hanslick: Bericht zum Symposion zum Gedenken an seinen hundertsten Todestag (forthcoming). I am grateful to Christoph Clemens Landerer for supplying me with a copy of this paper.

32 Significantly, it was in Libussa that Tomášek published his autobiography (which appeared in six instalments between 1845 and 1850).

33 The first volume of Palacký's history was published in 1836; the whole eventually ran to five volumes in ten parts, published over some 30 years (František Palacký, Geschichte von Böhmen: Grössentheils nach Urkunden und Handschriften, 5 vols. (Prague, 1836–67)). The Czech version, which carried the tellingly different title Dějiny národu Českého v Čechách a v Moravě (History of the Czech Nation in Bohemia and Moravia), first began to appear in 1848. We shall return to some of these figures below.

34 Hanslick is recalling the pre-March period, but for many of the Czech nationalists of his generation (including Smetana), German would remain the language in which serious discourse came most easily even later in the century. For a succinct account, see Sayer, The Coasts of Bohemia, 107–18.

35 Hillel J. Kieval, ‘The Social Vision of Bohemian Jews’, Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein (Cambridge, 1992), 246–83 (p. 253).

36 ‘Immer ähnlicher werden die Interessen der gebildeten Völker, immer mehr verschwindet ihre räumliche und geistige Entfernung, und Alles, was diesen Zweck befördert, wird mit großer Gunst aufgenommen. Möge diese auch einer neuen literarischen Unternehmung zu Theil werden, welche – nicht ausschließlich, aber doch vorzugsweise – dazu bestimmt ist, eine literarische Vermittlung zwischen dem slawischen Osten und Deutschland zu stiften, und somit einen Beitrag zu der sich jetzt bildenden Weltliteratur zu geben. Welches Land könnte mehr dazu geeignet sein, als Böhmen mit seiner halb slawischen, halb deutschen Bevölkerung, Böhmen, die Gränze des europäischen Ostens und Westens, ein Land, reich an Literatoren, die aller slawischen Dialecte kundig sind.’ Ost und West, 1 July 1837; translation adapted from Kieval, ‘The Social Vision of Bohemian Jews’, 279n.

37 Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, ed. Wapnewski, 38–40. Hanslick's first review appeared in Prag on 18 November 1844; he then contributed several additional concert reviews to this supplement through 1845. His last pieces for Glaser, important longer essays on Berlioz and Schumann, appeared in Ost und West in 1846. See Eduard Hanslick, Sämtliche Schriften: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, I/i: Aufsätze und Rezensionen 1844–1848, ed. Dietmar Strauß (Vienna, Cologne and Berlin, 1993), 3–57. Shortly after moving to Vienna in the autumn of 1846, Hanslick wrote a lengthy review of Wagner's Tannhäuser for the Wiener allgemeine Musikzeitung (ibid., 57–94). This would be the last publication that he signed as ‘Hanslik’. By early 1847, he had adopted the more German-like spelling by which he would be known thereafter.

38 Alfred Meißner, Geschichte meines Lebens, 2 vols. (Vienna and Teschen, 1884), i, 54–5. See also Hugh LeCaine Agnew, ‘Czechs, Germans, Bohemians? Images of Self and Other in Bohemia to 1848’, Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe, ed. Nancy M. Wingfield (New York and Oxford, 2003), 56–77 (pp. 60–1); and Kieval, ‘The Social Vision of Bohemian Jews’, 252–4.

39 Sabina's recollection is cited in Agnew, ‘Czechs, Germans, Bohemians?’, 60; Sabina, one of the writers whose work appeared most frequently in Ost und West, eventually identified himself as a Czech and is best known to musicians as the librettist of Smetana's first two operas. Robin Okey cites two examples in which even siblings went in opposite directions on this question. The Prague-born German art-historian Anton Springer grew up speaking a Slavic dialect, but ‘became a German as by natural power’, unmoved by literature in Czech; his brother, by contrast, became an ardent Czech patriot. Similarly, Jan Evangelista Purkyně (an acquaintance of Hanslick's father, as we have seen) became a Czech national revivalist, while his brother chose a German identity. See Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy, 112; Springer is quoted there from his autobiography, Aus meinem Leben (Vienna, 1892), 11.

40 Zimmermann later became the most influential Austrian philosopher of the day and Hanslick's colleague in the faculty at the University of Vienna. Two of Zimmermann's preserved poems – ‘Den Gefallenen’ and ‘Deutschland über Alles’ – are directly related to the revolution and were published in Vienna's Sonntagsblätter in 1848 (on 17 March and 6 June respectively). See the brief discussion in Martin Seiler, ‘Kurt Blaukopf und Robert Zimmermann: Spuren altösterreichischer Philosophie im Werk eines Musiksoziologen der Gegenwart’, Weltanschauungen des Wiener Fin de Siècle 1900/2000: Festgabe für Kurt Rudolf Fischer zum achtzigsten Geburtstag, ed. Gertraud Diem-Wille, Ludwig Nagl and Friedrich Stadler (Frankfurt am Main, 2002), 185–94 (pp. 187–8).

41 I wish to thank Meredith Lee for her assistance with the translation of this poem.

42 ‘Aber dieser alte Germane wollte nichts anderes als ein Czeche sein. Er arbeitete in böhmischer Geschichtsforschung und Archäologie, sammelte alle möglichen historischen Inschriften, wofern sie böhmisch waren, und war nebenbei Dichter vaterländischer Dramen.’ Meißner, Geschichte meines Lebens, ii, 10. Mikovec's contributions to Ost und West included pieces on archaeological-historical matters, as well as reviews of German-language theatre.

43 ‘Es ist dies das erste wirklich gelungene historische Drama in unserer Sprache.’ Ost und West, 12 (15 January 1848), 28.

44 ‘Auch die historischen Episoden mit Dalemil haben sehr angesprochen, so wie auch das von Herrn Hanslik neu componirte Lied aus der Königinhofer Handschrift “Ha ty naše slunce”, das jedem an die originell slawische, volksthümliche Melodie […] gewohnten Ohr einen wahren Genuß verschaffte.’ Bohemia, 14 January 1848; this review is signed ‘H.B.’

45 In a letter to Dvořák of 11 June 1882, Hanslick reported that he was unable to read the Czech texts of the composer's choral pieces V přirodě (In Nature's Realm), op. 63, but that does not gainsay the likelihood that Hanslick had a decent working knowledge of Czech as a native and resident of Prague 40 years earlier. See Antonín Dvořák, Korespondence a dokumenty: Kritické vydání (Correspondence and Documents: Critical Edition), 10 vols. (Prague, 1987–2004), v (1996): Korespondence přijatá 1877' 1884 (Correspondence Received 1877–84), 387. As Cohen notes, until the 1860s or so only the very highest strata of Prague's German-speaking population failed to learn any Czech (Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, 19); and, given that Hanslick's father was a utraquist, we may assume that as a young man Eduard knew more Czech than he was later willing to acknowledge.

46 These songs are briefly discussed in Ludvová, ‘Zur Biographie Eduard Hanslicks’, 43–4; eadem, ‘Několik pražských reálií k biografii Eduarda Hanslicka’, 384–6, and Grimm, Eduard Hanslicks Prager Zeit, 50–1 (with a reproduction of the first page of ‘Český houslista’). Evidently Hanslick's compositional activity, which does not seem to have extended beyond 1846, was limited to the realms of song and short piano pieces. Presumably representative of his best efforts are the Lieder aus der Jugendzeit, a set of 12 songs selected with Brahms's assistance and published in 1882 for the enjoyment of the critic's wife. In his memoirs, Hanslick gives a brief account of his efforts at composing, but nowhere does he acknowledge the two Czech songs in question. See Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, ed. Wapnewski, 26–9, 49–51.

47 This collection carries no date, but it must have appeared before Hoffmann's death on 1 October 1849, since the title-page gives the publisher as ‘Nákladem Jana Hoffmanna’; Hoffmann's widow took over the firm after his death and issued works under the imprint ‘Hoffmannová Vdova’. I am grateful to David Beveridge for helping me to obtain copies of the first edition of ‘Český houslista’ (National Library of the Czech Republic) and a later reissue of ‘Milostná píseň pod Wyšehradem’ (Municipal Library of Prague).

48 ‘Eine Sammlung von Gesängen der beliebtesten vaterländischen Tondichter “Zlatý zpěwník” enthält unter andern auch “Český houslista” und “Milostná písen pod Wyšehradem”. H. E. Hanslick, der Komponist dieser zwei Piècen, ist als geistreicher musikalischer Kritiker schon seit mehreren Jahren durch seine Besprechungen in Prager Blättern und in neuester Zeit durch seine Feuilletonartikel in der Wiener Zeitung rühmlich bekannt.’ Franz Balthasar Ulm, Bohemia, 23 September 1849. Although Ulm uses the newer spelling of Hanslick's name that the composer had adopted after moving to Vienna, the songs were published in Prague under the name Hanslik.

49 As Ludvová has suggested, publication of the German text seems especially apt in this case, since the song offers two familiar aspects of an imaginary Slavdom as seen through the sympathetic eyes of Johann Herder (‘Několik pražských reálií k biografii Eduarda Hanslicka’, 384). Here a wandering Czech musician brings joy to others through his music, but himself dreams only of returning to his beloved homeland.

50 ‘Die Schwierigkeit, in dem zweiten Gedichte mit seiner energisch-epischen Apostrophe und der zarten lyrischen Ausweichung den richtigen, insbesondere nationalen Ton zu treffen, springt in die Augen. Der Komponist ahmte mit außerordentlichem Geschick den rhapsodischen Styl des Barden nach. Ob er aber trotz der Anwendung des Unisono in der Moll-Tonart, eigenthümlicher Rhythmik und raschen Wechsels der Takt- und Tonart dieser Forderung Genüge gethan, möchte ich nicht zu entscheiden. Daß die Komposition bei ihrer geistreichen Haltung, bei dem poetischen Duft, der über das Ganze ausgegossen, nothwendig anziehen muß, ist natürlich.’ Ulm, in Bohemia, 23 September 1849.

51 The play was unpublished when it opened, but the scene in question can be inferred from the first edition, which appeared three years later; see Ferdinand B. Mikovec, Záhuba rodu Přemyslovského (Prague, 1851). The relatively late date of Ulm's review (23 September 1849) suggests that Hanslick's song may also have been unpublished at the time of the play's opening.

52 In 1829 this text was included in an omnibus edition containing both the Queen's Court Manuscript and a number of other ‘old Czech’ poems; see Kralodworsky Rukopis: Zbjrka staroČeskych zpiewo-prawnych basnj, s niekolika ginymi staroČeskymi zpiewy / Königinhofer Handschrift: Sammlung altböhmischer lyrisch-epischer Gesänge, nebst andern altböhmischen Gedichten, discovered and edited by Waclaw Hanka/Wenceslaw Hanka, trans. Waclaw Aloys Swoboda/Wenceslaw Aloys Swoboda (Prague, 1829). It was probably this published source that led the reviewer for Bohemia astray when he reported that the text of Hanslick's song had been drawn from the Königinhofer Handschrift.

53 As we have seen, in his autobiography, which was written after the forgeries had been exposed, Hanslick referred to Hanka derisively as the ‘discoverer’ of the Queen's Court Manuscript.

54 Ludvová concludes that the piece most probably was written independently of the play and was suggested only later, perhaps by Wilhelm August Ambros, another utraquist from the same Prague circle, as suitable for use as Dalimil's song (Ludvová, ‘Zur Biographie Eduard Hanslicks’, 44). Nevertheless, no one seems more likely than Mikovec to have revised the text in such a fashion. Despite Hanslick's probable involvement in this sense in the making of the play, he did not travel back from the Austrian capital to see it when it opened in Prague. Throughout the early weeks of 1848 he was actively reviewing concerts for the Wiener Zeitung; see Hanslick, Sämtliche Schriften, I/i, ed. Strauß, 131–42.

55 Meißner, Geschichte meines Lebens, ii, 9–15.

56 ‘Es soll auf der Grundlage vollständiger Gleichberechtigung beruhen, so dass weder Böhmen vor den Deutschen, noch die Deutschen vor den Böhmen irgend einen Vorzug genießen sollen’ (Bohemia, 23 March 1848); a similar proclamation appeared in the same newspaper on 5 April 1848. Among the signatories to the two appeals was Ambros.

57 Jeffrey T. Leigh notes that the revolution in Bohemia was ‘essentially a civil insurrection in which battles were fought more for control of public opinion than territory, and where insurgents levelled their criticisms as often against one another as against the dynastic state.’ Jeffrey T. Leigh, ‘Public Opinion, Public Order, and Press Policy in the Neo-Absolutist State: Bohemia, 1849–52’, Austrian History Yearbook, 35 (2004), 81–9 (p. 81).

58 Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, ed. Wapnewski, 82–5. With Metternich's dismissal on 13 March, for example, came the abolition of press censorship and soon thereafter the appearance of Hanslick's thoughts on ‘Censorship and Art Criticism’ (‘Censur und Kunst-Kritik’, Wiener Zeitung, 24 March 1848). Six months later he made the case for religious toleration, decrying in particular all persecution of Jews (‘Ueber Religionsverschiedenheit’, Beilage zum Morgenblatte der Wiener Zeitung, 25 and 26 October 1848). These articles are reprinted in Hanslick, Sämtliche Schriften, I/i, ed. Strauß, 56–8 and 189–201 respectively.

59 The ‘Wiener Briefe’ appeared in the Prager Zeitung in several instalments published between 20 July and 19 October 1848; reprinted in Hanslick, Sämtliche Schriften, I/i, ed. Strauß, 224–61. Hasner went on to have a distinguished political career as a liberal member of the Bohemian Landtag and Austrian Reichsrat, and as a cabinet minister. It may have been in connection with correspondence between the two men stemming from the revolutionary era that Hasner made the comment that Hanslick attributed to him about ‘national consciousness’ in the passage previously cited from the critic's autobiography; Hanslick reproduces some of Hasner's letters from this time in Aus meinem Leben (ed. Wapnewski, 125–30), but the comment in question is found neither among this selection nor in Hasner's own autobiography (Leopold von Hasner, Denkwürdigkeiten: Autobiographisches und Aphorismen, Stuttgart, 1892).

60 ‘Im Reichstage sind Demokraten und “Liberalen” bereits arg gegen einander gerathen, und in noch schlimmerer Weise Čechen und Deutsche. Ich kann es hier nicht verheheln, daß die Čechischen Deputirten Rieger, Trojan, HawliČek und ihre Gesinnungsgenossen durch die nicht zu entschuldigende Heftigkeit ihrer Ausbrüche in der letzten Sitzung der allgemeinen Mißbilligung verfallen sind. […] Unsere Republikaner sollten von ihm lernen, ihr ungewaschenes, komödienhaftes, lumpendreschendes Wesen ist nicht geeignet, viel Proselyten aus der gebildeten Klasse zu machen, mir wenigstens wird stets ordentlich aristokratisch zu Muth, wenn ich aus dem “demokratischen Klubb” komme.’ Hanslick, in Prager Zeitung (15 September 1848 and 26 September 1848), repr. in Hanslick, Sämtliche Schriften, I/i, ed. Strauß, 241, 243. Liberals like Hanslick practised a rhetoric of uniform citizenry when it came to passive civil liberties such as freedom of religion, but tied explicit political rights to property and education. The radical democrats, by contrast, postulated a broader bourgeoisie in the sense of a fully enfranchised and socially free citizenry across classes.

61 Around the time of these street skirmishes, Ambros reported on events in Prague to his friend Hanslick. ‘What unbelievable stupidity, brutality, wrongheadedness goes about now in the bright light of day, you would have to see for yourself to believe’ (‘Was für unglaubliche Eselei, Roheit, Verkehrtheit jetzt in hellem Sonnenlicht herumprunkt, das muß man nur selbst sehen!’), he wrote; and then to demonstrate Prague's newly found ‘equality of the two nationalities’ (‘Gleichsellung beider Nationalitäten’) he provided his friend with a couple of ink sketches depicting three Czechs beating up one German, and three Germans beating up one Czech. Ambros's letter is quoted in Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, ed. Wapnewski, 36–8 (p. 37).

62 On Mikovec, see Constant von Wurzbach, ‘Ferdinand Bogelislaw/Mikowec’, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich (Vienna, 1868), xviii, 283–7; and Jan Novotný, ‘Zu den Beziehungen der slawischen Politiker zur Wiener Regierung während der Revolution 1848–1849’, L'udovít Štúr und die slawische Wechselseitigkeit: Gesamte Referate und die integrale Diskussion der wissenschaftlichen Tagung in Smolenice 27.–29. Juni 1966, ed. L'udovít Holotík (Bratislava, 1969), 152–64 (pp. 152–4).

63 On the journal's founding, see Leigh, ‘Public Opinion, Public Order, and Press Policy’, 96–7. Lumír – whom we shall revisit in connection with Smetana's Vyšehrad – was the disguise that Mikovec had worn to the masked ball he had organized in Prague on 29 February 1848; Meißner, Geschichte meines Lebens, ii, 11–12. As editor, Mikovec published belles lettres and literary criticism, as well as essays on historical, genealogical and archaeological topics. He also took steps to ensure that neither Hanslick nor his Czech songs would be forgotten, publishing in 1857 a ‘List of Czech Musicians, Composers, Male Singers and Female Singers Currently Living’, in which an entry is reserved for none other than ‘Hanslik, Eduard, doctor of philosophy, native of Prague, known as a composer of several Czech songs and the author of excellent articles on music. He now lives in Vienna’ (‘Hanslik, Eduard, doktor filosofie, rodilý Pražan, jest znám co skladatel několika Českých písní a výteČných kritických Článků o hudbě. Žije nyní ve Vídni’); see ‘Seznam Českých hudebníků, skladatelů, zpěváků a zpěvaČek nyní žijících’, Lumír: Belletristický týdenník, 7/49 (3 December 1857), 167. I am grateful to David Beveridge for making me aware of this citation, as well as for the English translation. Notably, Mikovec persists here in using the Czech spelling of Hanslick's surname that had been given up ten years earlier.

64 The song is included in Kníže's Five Czech Songs, op. 21 (1819). It contains many of the same stylistic features adopted by Hanslick and so may even have served as a model to some degree for Hanslick's own song; see Ludvová, ‘Několik pražských reálií k biografii Eduarda Hanslicka’, 384–5. Kníže was one of the composers whose work, along with that of Hanslick, was included in the Zlatý zpěwník.

65 Especially remarkable in this connection is Hanslick's later remark about the ‘mediocre’ Johann Nepomuk Škroup, who, having been ‘rejected by the German public’, could count only on the support of ‘the newly born Czech party’ (among whose members, of course, had been Mikovec himself).

66 Katherine David-Fox, ‘Prague-Vienna, Prague-Berlin: The Hidden Geography of Czech Modernism’, Slavic Review, 59 (2000), 735–60 (p. 737).

67 Hanslick, in Neue freie Presse, 28 November 1893; for the German original of this passage and of the quotations that follow, see Appendix, item 4. For a discussion of the negative shading of Hanslick's use of the word ‘reflection’ in contexts such as this, see Brodbeck, ‘Dvořák's Reception in Liberal Vienna’, 100.

68 Beckerman, ‘In Search of Czechness’, 72–3.

69 ‘Der verödete Wischehrad, die alte Herzogsburg Prags mit ihren trümmerhaften Wällen und grasbewachsenen Schanzen.’ Robert Zimmermann, review of Ferdinand von Saar, Innocens and Heinrich der Vierte, Wiener Zeitung, 21 March 1867.

70 On Bach, see Gedichte von Friedrich Bach, ed. Julius Reinwarth (Prague, 1900), v–xxxv.

71 See Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, ed. Wapnewski, 31–2. For a more comprehensive account, see Bonnier and Erling Lomnäs and Dietmar Strauß, Auf der Suche nach der poetischen Zeit: Der Prager Davidsbund: Ambros, Bach, Bayer, Hampel, Hanslick, Helfert, Heller, Hock, Ulm: Zu einem vergessenen Abschnitt der Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (Saarbrücken, 1999). Also helpful is Grimm, Eduard Hanslicks Prager Zeit, 78–89. For a charming recollection, not only of Bach, but of the entire Young Bohemia movement in the early 1840s, see ‘Des Dichters und Doctors Medicinä Friedrich Bach erster Patient: Ein Erinnerungsblatt von A. W. Ambros’, Wiener Zeitung, 9 May 1872, repr. in Lomnäs and Strauß, op. cit., ii, 204–8.

72 Gedichte von Friedrich Bach, ed. Reinwarth, xxxi.