Page:The music of Bohemia.djvu/40

 26 sound of very high pitch, which had  my deafness. This little tone-picturing I dared to insert in this composition because it was so fateful for me."

Smetana always found in the small of chamber music the proper interpreter for expression of his most intimate feelings. Thus the Trio, op. 15, was written to the memory of his little daughter, whose death brought to Smetana a great sorrow.

Smetana never accommodated his artistic principles to the taste of the public. He was too serious an artist to make a work pleasing to the masses. His eight operas—except The Bartered Bride—had to fight against a wall of misunderstanding; and were victorious, only after many years of dispute, because of their originality and vitality. A real genius, was much ahead of his time.

The Bartered Bride (1866), Two Widows