Page:The music of Bohemia.djvu/48

 music. The first Czech composer who wrote this unusual form was Georg Benda (1722—1795). His melodramatic compositions, Medea, Ariadna on the Naxos, appeared only two years after Rousseau's melodramatic experiments. Benda did not know anything about Rousseau's work and made his melodramas of his own initiative. His technique was essentially different from that used later by Beethoven in Egmont, by Schumann in Manfred, and by Fibich in his works. Benda never let his music be performed simultaneously with the recitations, but as an interlude between the short sections of the poetry.

One hundred years after Benda, Fibich revived melodrama in Bohemia, greatly changing and enriching its technique. Thus his trilogy, Hippodamia, performed in three evenings, is the first example in the history of music where the modern orchestra supports continuously the recitations of the actors. Fibich prepared himself for the great task of writing scenic melodrama by composing many concert