String Quartet No. 1 ("From My Life", ) in E minor, written in 1876, is a four-movement chamber composition by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana. It is an autobiographical work with nationalistic elements and was published in 1880 by František Augustin Urbánek in Prague. It was given a private premiere in 1878 in Prague, with Antonín Dvořák as violist, and its public premiere took place on 29 March 1879, performed by Ferdinand Lachner, Jan Pelikán, Josef Krehan and Alois Neruda. Smetana was a complex figure in his time, straddling his Austro-Hungarian upbringing coupled with his ethnic Czech background. His first quartet encompasses the politics and culture that resulted from that upbringing. Background Autobiography At an unknown point in Smetana’s life, he contracted syphilis—in 1874, at 50 years old, his health began to swiftly decline. After a gradual decrease in his hearing, he became completely deaf by October of that year. It is widely believed that his deafness was caused by syphilis. After becoming deaf, Smetana moved in 1876 from Prague to Jabkenice. He still hoped that the condition would not be permanent. In the autumn of that year, he began to compose a new work. It was to be his intimate confession, a work depicting the course of his life. Included in the work was a high-pitched E natural which mimicked the ringing in his ears. He completed the composition on 29 December 1876. In a letter to his friend Josef Srb-Debrnov, Smetana formulated the work's ideological conception and the features of the individual movements. Smetana endured many hardships throughout his life, and these hardships inspired him to write music. For example, his daughter's death was the inspiration to write his Piano Trio in G minor, while the death of his first wife, Catherine, was the inspiration for the third movement of his String Quartet No. 1. The work was published in 1880 by Fr. Urbánek in Prague. Nationalism Though he was known for his orchestral and operatic works, in his last years, Smetana’s From My Life (Quartet No. 1) was played more frequently than his other works. His chamber music was seen as less of a threat perhaps because much of his other work held political undertones of Czech nationalism. While his Quartet No. 1 was not overtly political, it honored his Czech roots with the polka featured in the second movement. Until 1848, in Czechoslovakia, the educated, elite classes