National thought became noticeable in Czech musical circles after the relaxation of post-1848 neo-absolutism. The prestigious and universal genre of opera recommended itself the formulation of nationalist ideas in hopes of creating specifically Czech cultural monuments. Composers tended to signal Czech specificity through opera in one of two ways: legendary/historical serious opera or village comedies. These models were at work in the operas of the so-called “big three” of Czech composers: Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, and Leoš Janáček. In terms of instrumental music, programme music – where orchestral composition was based on or preceded from an pre-existing story, legend, or text – offered the best way for creating music with clear and understandable connections to self-consciously Czech content. As with other countries in Europe, folk music proved to be another useful resource for expressing the national character of a people. Explicit citations of folk tunes are somewhat rare in the music of the most well-known Czech composers, though they were occasionally placed in the foreground, especially in Janáček’s earlier compositions.

One of the prominent figures in Czech musical nationalism was Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884). Smetana had taken up residence in Gothenburg during the years of neo-absolutism and returned to Prague in 1861 to take advantage of the liberalizing atmosphere. Smetana is best known for his eight operas, at least in the Bohemian Lands: Braniboři v Čechách (“The Brandenburgers in Bohemia”, 1866), Prodaná nevěsta (“The bartered bride”, 1866), Dalibor (1867), Libuše (1872), Dvě vdovy (“The two widows”, 1874, rev. 1878), Hubička (“The kiss”, 1876), Tajemství (“The secret”, 1878), and Čertova stěna (“The devil’s wall”, 1882). Internationally, his reputation primarily rests on his cycle of tone poems entitled Má vlast (“My fatherland”, 1874-79), of which Vltava (known mainly by its German title, Die Moldau) is the most frequently performed. The cycle features six tone poems that draw their programs from a combination of Czech geographical features and legends. In its attempt to depict famous Czech places and stories in music, Má vlast is an eminently nationalist work.

The operas form the bulk of Smetana’s output, but their connection to explicitly nationalist discourse varies. “The bartered bride” was frequently referred to as the most national of all Czech operas during the 19th century, in part through its claim to represent the essence of village life in the Bohemian Lands. “The Brandenburgers in Bohemia”, Dalibor, and Libuše were likewise viewed as nationalist, but they instead depicted events from the Bohemian history and legends. Libuše was composed especially for the opening of the National Theatre in Prague, an event for which it had to wait nine years. Smetana’s other operas rely on less explicitly nationalist material. “The two widows” took its libretto from a Czech translation of a French conversation play. Nevertheless, because of their Czech-language librettos and Smetana’s widely recognized nationalist views, all his operas are to some extent viewed as nationalist. While Smetana was intent on giving the Czech people operas in their own language (a nationalist aim), he was explicit that he did not use folk songs in his composition, preferring instead to combine elements of folk style with a decidedly progressive European harmonic and formal musical language. Smetana was and continued to be regarded as the founding figure of Czech opera, though others preceded him in composing operas set to Czech texts.

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) had a somewhat more complicated relationship to ideas of Czech nationalism. The compositions by which he became known to international audiences, Moravské dvojzpěvy (“Moravian duets”, 1875) and the first set of Slovanské tance (“Slavonic dances”, 1878), relied on a sense of Czech exoticism to appeal to foreign audiences, but their connection to Czech folk music or other national markers was somewhat tenuous, especially in the case of the “Moravian duets”. Dvořák did write a number of works whose nationalist resonances are quite strong, such as the Husitská (“Hussite”) Overture (1883), whose primary musical material is drawn from two ancient Czech tunes, the “Saint Wenceslaus chorale” and the Hussite battle hymn Ktož jsú boží bojovníci (“Ye who are warriors of God”). The Hussites in particular were an important historical reference for 19th-century Czech nationalists; the Hussites’ victorious battles against outside groups seeking to suppress their heterodox beliefs were seen as a prefiguration of the struggle for Czech autonomy. Nevertheless, Dvořák’s credentials as a nationalist composer were constantly contested during his lifetime, in large part due to his success with international audiences and his friendly association with music critics in Vienna. His popular and critical success then rested and continues to rest mainly on his symphonies, especially the “Seventh”, “Eighth”, and “Ninth” (1885, 1889, and 1893, respectively) as well as other works in more anodyne, “absolute” genres like the “Serenade for strings in E major” (1875) and the “Cello concerto in B minor” (1895).

After a sojourn in America, from which he returned in 1895, Dvořák composed five tone poems with nationalist content, in the sense that they sought to depict Czech legends in a manner similar to Smetana’s Má vlast. Four of these tone poems were based on poems, themselves inspired by Czech folk tales, from the pen of Karel Jaromír Erben. Dvořák’s four Erben tone poems, all composed in 1896, are Vodník (“The water goblin”), Polednice (“The noon witch”), Zlatý kolovrat (“The golden spinning wheel”), and Holoubek (“The wood dove”). A fifth symphonic poem, Píseň bohatýrská (“Heroic song”, 1897), was created with a more general program of Dvořák’s own conception, and it is debatable to what extent this tone poem can be considered explicitly nationalist. Towards the end of his life Dvořák told a reporter that he considered opera to be the suitable art form for the nation, and his final three operas – Čert a Káča (“The Devil and Kate”, 1899), Rusalka (1901) and Armida (1903) – were composed with this idea in mind. “The Devil and Kate” and Rusalka take Czech fairy tales and legends as their inspiration, and received praise for their choice of national themes, but the plot of Armida was drawn from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata.

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), the youngest of the “big three” of Czech composers, also had a somewhat complicated relationship to 19th-century nationalist discourses. In the last decades of the century, he was actively engaged in the ethnographic collection of folk songs; but the operas for which he is most famous, from the final decade of his life, tended to eschew texts with overt or latent Czech nationalist content. Several of his earlier operas, including Šárka (1888) and Její pastorkyňa (Jenůfa, 1903), did have nationalist resonances. Šárka was based on a Czech legend of a warrior maiden, who seduces a male warrior and then kills him with the help of her Amazonian followers. The legend also formed the basis for one of Smetana’s tone poems from Má vlast, called Šárka as well. Jenůfa’s nationalist (or perhaps regionalist) character derives from its local colour and peasant setting. Based on Gabriela Preissová’s play Její pastorkyňa, the opera preserves its prose dialogue in Moravian dialect. The Moravian trappings of the opera were perceived as rustic-exotic by Prague audiences, to the point that they tended to think of Janáček as a specifically Moravian composer. (For his part, Janáček considered himself a Czech composer through and through.)

Other composers, such as Karel Šebor (1843–1903) and Karel Bendl (1838–1897), also employed the models of village comedy or mytho-historical tragedy in their operas. Šebor’s three initial operas brought him the most success, and all feature subjects drawn from Czech history. They were Templáři na Moravě (“The Templars in Moravia”, 1865), set in the 13th century; Drahomíra (1867), about the legendary duchess and mother of St Wenceslaus; and Nevěsta husitská (“The Hussite bride”, 1868), a grand opera set on the eve of the Battle of Lipany in 1434, which marked the end of the Hussite Wars. Two of Bendl’s operas feature texts based on Czech history. Břetislav (1869), with a subject drawn from early Czech history, depicted the rise of Břetislav I (died 1055). The opera failed after its first performance; more successful was Bendl’s opera Dítě Tábora (“The child of Tábor”, 1888), a three-act tragic opera set during the Hussite Wars. The versatile and internationally active Zdeněk Fibich (1850–1900), a pupil of Smetana who was made opera producer at the Czech National Theatre in 1899, also regularly made use of what was by now a fixed repertoire of legendary historical themes – two songs based on the Manuscript of Dvůr Králové (1871); Záboj, Slavoj a Luděk (1873, a symphonic tone poem on legendary heroes); the opera Šarka (1896, on the legendary maiden-warrior); a cantata to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the death of Emperor Charles IV.