In some ways, the tensions embedded in Smetana research outlined in this study are built into biographies as a genre, itself a form born of nineteenth-century thinking. As theorists Alan Rawes and Arthur Bradley succinctly address:

Studies of Romantic figures like Smetana—studies which, by definition, lean toward celebrating the genius of a lone individual rather than the efforts of a larger community—run the risk of seeming co-authored by their subjects. The present study, in examining music criticism and research during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not only affirms that Romantic artists had an extraordinary influence over their biographies, but extends this claim by suggesting that Romantic critics have also been unwittingly channeled through the work of later historians. Traditional biographies or artist-centric studies of Smetana perpetuate the same rhetoric that members of the UB first formulated around the composer. For UB authors, correspondences between Smetana's compositions, particularly his pairing of “Vyšehrad” and Libuše, leant prestige to the Czech culture among wider European audiences. This pairing also, to a degree, invented the idea of Czech music itself through the course of a complicated dialogue with German models. Smetana's decision to compose in the genre of the symphonic poem situated him as a modern leader, according to UB members, while his work within the genre of the music drama made his leadership both controversial and revolutionary. Scholars at the beginning of the twentieth century perpetuated these ideas by celebrating Smetana's affiliation with Liszt and problematizing his relationship with Wagner, but did so in ways that positioned Smetana as more vertically rather than horizontally Czech.