The Kralice Bible
Though not the oldest in point of date, the Kralice Bible (1st ed. 1579-93, 6 vs.) is the most renowned of all the Bohemian Bibles. Formerly in the Lenox collection, it is now the property, with other rare Bohemian Bibles, of the New York City Public Library
Music. Critics rate Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) as the greatest Bohemian composer, yet it is Dr. Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) who is the most widely known outside of his native country. The reason for this is that Dvořák visited England and spent a number of years in New York as director of a conservatory of music. “The forcefulness and freshness of Dvořák’s music,” writes H. E. Krehbiel, the noted New York musical critic, “come primarily from his use of dialects and idioms derived from the folk-music of the Chekhs.... Dvořák is not a nationalist in the Lisztian sense; he borrows not melodies but the characteristic elements from the folk-songs of his people.”
Smetana’s renown was won on precisely the same ground which made Dvořák famous, the only difference being that Smetana applied the principle of the folk-song before Dvořák. Previous to Smetana’s time one could speak of music in Bohemia, but not of Bohemian
music. George Benda (1721-1795), Joseph Mysliveček (1737-1781), John Ladislav Dusík (1761-1812—the name of this “neglected composer” is also spelled Dussek), Václav John Tomášek or Tomaschek (1774-1850), author of the usual method of fingering double scales, were writers of music who belonged to the period when there was music in Bohemia, when composers were content to imitate Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and Wagner; when they strove to out-German the Germans in music. Smetana was the first to strike the true chord of inspiration—the chord touching the nation’s soul—the folk-song. It was the influence of the folk-song which lent to his masterpiece, the Bartered Bride, (Prodaná Nevěsta) its exquisite charm and enduring freshness. Apropos, the Bartered Bride was introduced to the American public at the New York Metropolitan Opera House on April 29, 1909, and the baton on this unforgettable occasion was wielded by Gustav Mahler, also a native of Bohemia, though not a Čech.
Of the several musical artists who have visited the United States, none have won larger recognition from the critics and the public than Jan Kubelík (born 1880), violinist, Emmy Destinn (born 1878), soprano.
Periodicals. The long cherished wish that there might be an English language newspaper which should interpret to the Americans the ideals of the Bohemian race was realized in September, 1892, when The Bohemian Voice, a monthly printed in Omaha and published by the National Committee, was issued. Through lack of funds The Bohemian Voice was forced to suspend publication in November, 1894. The first editor of this “organ of the Bohemian-Americans in the United States” was Thomas Čapek; upon his resignation, in April, 1894, J. J. Král took charge as editor.
The speculative American Bi-Monthly, launched in Chicago in 1914, failed after publishing two numbers.
In February, 1917, the Bohemian National Alliance in America started a monthly in Chicago, The Bohemian Review. In the initial number the editor, Dr. J. F. Smetanka, argues as follows: “If some two hundred thousand people[10] can support more than eighty publications in the Bohemian language, why should not three hundred thousand of their children, more used to the English language, establish and support just one organ devoted to their interests as Americans of Czech descent?”