This is such a radiant, magical piece, the inspiration bursting forth so irresistibly from whispered beginning to breathless end, that it is hardly surprising to find that the very idea of the two streams joining to become the River Vltava was the initial spark, on one of Smetana's holiday trips already in 1867, for the entire cycle of six symphonic poems. Another important element was the Vyšehrad motif (bar 359) which binds all six together, and in 1874, despite being by now totally deaf, he was able to compose the whole of Vyšehrad and Vltava in quick succession, the latter completed in just 19 days (as he was proud to set down in the autograph score).

Undoubtedly the most splendid correction to the traditional text is made in Hugh Macdonald's new edition (Ud below, though probably he does not go far enough): for a whole 15-bar passage near the end, the piccolo should play an octave higher.

sources

A  Autograph full score (1874), in the Bedřich Smetana Museum, Prague

(PX  Manuscript parts used for the first performance in 1875, lost)

E,P  First edition score and parts, published by Urbanek in 1880; E was prepared from A, but P was certainly taken from PX and its text interesting in its own right

All the above have rehearsal letters A–L (in Smetana's hand in A)

EE  Eulenburg miniature score, published in 1914, with bar numbers (only)

Br  Full score, published by Breitkopf & Härtel c.1930, with rehearsal letters and bar numbers

Ua  Urtext edition full score published by Orbis, Prague in 1950, with programme note (in Czech only) by Zdenĕk Nejedlý. There is no Critical Commentary, nor mention of any editor's name, but clearly Ua is a thorough new revision of the text in which A has been consulted, and solutions to the many inconsistencies in the earlier editions attempted. But Ua is greatly over-edited, bringing very many details into line with other places which are only tenuously analogous, and adding much gratuitous editorial phrasing. Ua has rehearsal figures every 10 bars (bar 10 = fig.1, 170 = fig.17), but after 35 the count goes wrong, the next figure (i.e. at bar 360) being numbered 40 (presumably 35 was misread as 39)

In 1951 Ua was reprinted in miniature score, with different programme note (in four languages) by František Bartoš, and some differences in the text, e.g. slurs and ties in bars 42–61 WW