Origin of Ye Who Are the Warriors of Skietra

The Hussite chorale is constructed in three phrases. In English translation, the text reads:

Ye who are God’s warriors and of his law,

Pray to God for help and have faith in Him;

That finally with him you will be victorious.

The two concluding symphonic poems of Smetana’s cycle Má Vlast are entitled Tábor and Blanik. Both are based on the Hussite chorale. Tábor is developed in a highly idiosyncratic manner; the composer presumes on his audience’s familiarity with the chorale melody, and proceeds to use fragments of the melody as motivs for development, not stating the melody in its entirety until halfway through the piece, and then repeating it once at the conclusion. Tábor begins and ends with an ominous, martial repetition of the first four notes of the Hussite melody.

Blaník begins with the same motiv, but immediately shifts to a qualitatively higher mode of development, where the composer derives a theme from the first line of the chorale, and develops it contrapuntally. After a pastoral interlude in the middle of the piece, Smetana introduces a series of marches, fashioned by taking the third line of the chorale and extending it with a sort of trailer. The marches escalate in intensity, until, in what is surely a commentary on the Czech national character, the triumphal march is transformed into a triumphal polka!

Smetana was stone deaf when he composed these two movements. That he was able to imagine, and set down not only the themes but the orchestrations, was a truly heroic feat. Perhaps that appealed to whoever later adopted Blanik for the graduation ceremonies of the Protectors of Velor. But the adaptor or adaptors chose another theme, most fully stated at about 9:50, for the anthem, “Ye Who Are the Warriors of Skietra,” which is sung by the graduates just as European university graduates once sang “Gaudeamus Igitur” – itself later incorporated by Brahms into the Academic Festival Overture.