Bedřich Smetana Bedřich Smetana Bedřich Smetana (; 2 March 1824 – 12 May 1884) 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" ("My Homeland"), which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer's native country and contains the famous symphonic poem "The Moldau". Smetana was naturally gifted as a composer, and gave his first public
Czech name Czech name Czech names are composed of a given name and a surname. Czechs typically get one given name – additional names may be chosen by themselves upon baptism but they generally use one. With marriage, the bride typically adopts the bridegroom's surname. In the Czech Republic, names are simply known as "jména" ("names") or, if the context requires it, "křestní jména" ("Baptism names"). The singular form is "jméno". Generally, a given name may have Christian roots or traditional Slavic pre-Christian origin (e.g. Milena, Dobromira, Jaroslav, Václav, Vojtěch). In the past, it was common to give only officially recognized names