In 2024, this composer’s 200th birthday was celebrated in an annual spring music festival that always begins on May 12th with his most famous orchestral work. A viola solo on a descending short-long-short motif over violin tremolos opens an E minor chamber piece by this composer that features a second movement polka. Another piece by this composer begins with two harps imitating the bard Lumír and uses the motif [read slowly] “B-flat, E-flat, D, B-flat” to depict a (*) “High Castle.” This non-Beethoven composer imitated his hearing loss with a sustained high E at the end of a string quartet that premiered with Dvořák as violist. Two flutes play swirling figures to represent a river in a set of six tone poems depicting the homeland of this composer of From My Life. For 10 points, name this Czech composer whose symphonic cycle Má vlast includes “The Moldau.” ■END■
ANSWER: Bedřich Smetana (The first line refers to the Prague Spring Festival. Moldau is the German name for the Vltava river.)
<KP, Classical Music>
= Average correct buzz position