Leoš Janáček on Music Theory Print

1. X. 1905

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Background#

Janáček intended the composition to be a tribute to a worker named František Pavlík (1885–1905), who on 1 October 1905 was bayoneted during demonstrations in support for a Czech university in Brno. The composition remained lost until 1924 (the year of Janáček’s seventieth birthday), when Tučková announced that she owned a copy. The second performance took place on 23 November 1924 in Prague, under the title 1. X. 1905. Janáček later accompanied the work with the following inscription: The white marble of the steps of the in Brno. The ordinary labourer František Pavlík falls, stained with blood. He came merely to champion higher learning and has been slain by cruel murderers. The first authorized printed edition of the work was published in 1924 by the Hudební matice in Prague. The Dutch composer Theo Verbey made an orchestral version of 1.X.1905, which premiered on 9 May 2008 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with the Dutch Radio Filharmonisch Orkest conducted by Claus Peter Flor.

Ballad of Blaník

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Background#

The work was dedicated to Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the President of Czechoslovakia at the time, who had been a strong supporter of independence; Czechoslovakia had become an independent nation in 1918, the year before Janáček began his composition.

Composition#

Janáček used as his source text a narrative poem by Jaroslav Vrchlický, from his Peasant Ballads (), which is based on a Czech legend about a small army sleeping in the mountain of Blaník. Other Czech composers had previously been inspired by this legend, including Bedřich Smetana, who concluded his Má vlast set of symphonic poems with a piece named ‘Blaník’, and Zdeněk Fibich, who composed an opera with the same title. The poem was printed in full in the original score. Hugh MacDonald has stated that, in common with Janáček’s other symphonic poems, there is “very little connection” between the original poem and Janáček’s music and that although “some of the music can be interpreted to fit the poem, with a certain licence, … much remains obscure”. This is particularly true after the first 75 bars. According to MacDonald’s analysis, Janáček seems to have used the poem as a springboard to composing a symphonic movement, rather than composing a piece that reflects the message and content of the original text.

Capriccio (Janáček)

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Background#

The work was apparently inspired by the request of the pianist Otakar Hollmann, who had lost the use of his right hand during World War I. During their first meeting Janáček refused to write such a work, declaring: “But, my dear boy, why do you want to play with one hand? It’s hard to dance when you have only one leg.” Janáček later changed his decision and began composing a piano piece for left hand, but did not notify Hollman about the composition. Hollman contacted Janáček again after finding out about the existence of the work in the press. Janáček did not dedicate the work to him and did not give him the right to premiere the work, stating: “I cannot give any kind of rights to the first performance. Whoever manages to do it can play it.” However, in May 1927 he sent the score to the pianist, and in the summer of the same year Hollmann started to study the new composition. The premiere took place on March 2, 1928 in the Smetana Hall of the Municipal Cultural Center in Prague, with conductor Jaroslav Řídký, Hollmann as pianist and seven Czech Philharmonic members: Václav Máček (flute), Evžen Šerý and František Trnka (trumpets), Antonín Bok, Jaroslav Šimsa and Gustav Tyl (trombones) and with Antonín Koula (tenor tuba). Janáček often called the piece “Vzdor” (Defiance) in his letters to Kamila Stösslová. The first edition of the Capriccio was prepared by Jarmil Burghauser in 1953. Nowadays it is played regularly at concerts and on recordings.

Concertino (Janáček)

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Background#

The composition was written in first months of 1925, but Janáček decided on its inception in the end of 1924. He was impressed by the skills of pianist Jan Heřman, and therefore he dedicated the composition to him. (The first printing by Hudební matice from 1926 bears the dedication: “To Jan Heřman”). The concertino was at first intended to be a piano concerto, but later grew into a small chamber concerto. It was first entitled “Spring”. This title Janáček wrote into the finished manuscript; he also added a date (25 April 1925) and a program note. The première of this ‘small concerto’ took place on 16 February 1926 in Brno at the third concert of the Moravian Composer’s Club. The piano part was performed by Ilona Štěpánová-Kurzová, František Kudláček played first violin, Viktor Nopp the second, the viola was played by Josef Trkan, the clarinet by Stanislav Krtička, František Janský played French horn and František Bříza the bassoon. The work was successful: it was played twice at its premiere and soon received great acclaim in Europe.

Destiny (Janáček)

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Performance history#

Osud was given in concert form in Brno in 1934, 1948 and 1954, all conducted by Břetislav Bakala. The first staging was in 1958 in Brno, conducted by František Jílek, as part of a complete cycle of operas at the 1958 Janáček Festival, in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Janáček’s death. However, the structure of the plot was altered from the original to give the story a “flashback” format, where the story begins with Act 3 and interpolates Act 1 and Act 2 as the “flashbacks”, before returning to finish Act 3. Scholars have criticised weaknesses in the plot as the reason for the opera’s neglect.

Elegy on the Death of Daughter Olga

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Background#

Olga was the first-born child of Leoš and Zdenka Janáček. She was born on 15 August 1882 in Brno. From her childhood, she showed remarkable talent in various arts, though not in music (to the mild disappointment of her father). Her mother later recalled that " Olga grew up into a lovely girl. Her skin was delicate and smooth with a peach-bloom to it; like her father, she had a dimple in her chin." Sadly, her health was poor from an early age, and her physical state brought a lot of anxiety to her parents. At the age of six, she fell ill with inflammation of joints. She recovered, however, the illness negatively affected the functioning of the heart. The situation worsened after her younger brother Vladimír died in November, 1890. Olga remained the only child of her parents, and also the only bond connecting the members of the family. Leoš Janáček and his daughter, both keen admirers and supporters of Russian culture, were members of the Russian Circle in Brno. In March, 1902, the composer accompanied Olga to Saint Petersburg, in order to deepen her knowledge of Russian language and to let her become familiar with Russian life and society. Janáček dedicated two of his works to his daughter. He inscribed the first published piano reduction of the opera Jenůfa, his first masterwork and the composition which later opened him the way to the world opera stages, “To the memory of Olga Janáčková”. The second work, the Elegy, was inspired by their common love of Russian culture. It was composed to original Russian verses written by Marfa Veveritsa, a member of the Russian Circle and a friend of Olga. The composition was completed on 28 April 1903, however, Janáček later (in March, 1904) altered some parts of it. The Elegy was apparently composed directly to the Russian original, and it was translated later by B. Zavadil. It was premiered after Janáček’s death, on 20 December 1930, in the Brno Radio. The manuscript of the composition was not preserved. The duration of the work is approximately 6 minutes.

From the House of the Dead

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Composition history#

Janáček worked on this opera from February 1927 to 8 June 1928, knowing that it would be his last, and for it he broke away from the habit he had developed of creating characters modeled on his love interest Kamila Stösslová, although the themes of loneliness and isolation can clearly be seen as a response to her indifference to his feelings. There is only one female character, and the setting, a Siberian prison, presents a large ensemble cast instead of one or several prominent leads. There is no narrative to the work as a whole, but individual characters narrate episodes in their lives, and there is a play-within-a-play in act 2. From the House of the Dead was virtually finished when Janáček died. Two of his students, believing the orchestration was incomplete, “filled out” large portions of the score and adapted the ending to be more optimistic in tone. In addition to the work of Břetislav Bakala and Osvald Chlubna, made changes to the text and sequence of events in the opera. Decades later, a version closer to the composer’s intentions superseded that version, and it is the one most often heard today. Some productions, however, still use the earlier version’s ending to lessen the bleakness of the story. The opera requires a vast orchestra, including chains as a percussion instrument to evoke the sound of the prisoners. The words of prisoners’ songs from the Dostoevsky novel are used in full or in part by Janáček. An arrangement in the form of a suite of the opera by conductor František Jílek has been performed by the Brno Philharmonic. One critic has suggested that by pursuing extreme high and low sonorities in this opera, Janáček was cutting out its heart, the orchestral mid range, in an attempt to convey human heartlessness.

Glagolitic Mass

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Background#

The text is in Old Church Slavonic, with five vocal movements that correspond to the Catholic Ordinary of the Mass, omitting “Dona nobis pacem” in the Agnus Dei. The musical origins of the work can be traced to Janáček’s Latin setting of the Kyrie, Agnus Dei, and Credo for organ and chorus. This was used as a dictation exercise by his composition students in 1908. Janáček had extensive experience working with choirs, as well as writing a large amount of choral music. It begins and closes with triumphant fanfares dominated by the brass. In between these sections lies particularly vibrant and rhythmic writing for solo voices as well as choir. Curiously, the final movement is titled Intrada, which means entrance. Before this Intrada, Janáček introduces a dramatic organ solo of considerable originality – a moto perpetuo of wild energy. Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass is considered an important work of the century and is frequently performed and recorded today. Janáček was a strong supporter of pan-Slavism, and this mass has been viewed as a celebration of Slavic culture. and by Jiři Zahrádka.

Idyll for Strings

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History#

The Idyll was composed, or at least sketched, during the summer of 1878 while Janáček was on holiday in the Bavarian town of Oettingen, and is said to have been inspired in part by the scenery of the places he visited. It was first performed in a five-movement version on 15 December of that year in Janáček’s home town of Brno. The composer himself conducted, and his friend Antonín Dvořák was in the audience. During the following two years Janáček added two more movements, and he conducted these along with three of the original movements on 12 December 1880, again in Brno. However, he soon came to think of the work as “outdated” and did not attempt another orchestral work for ten more years. Interest in it revived after it was rediscovered in 1938 by the musicologist Vladimír Helfert. The work was first published in 1951, by the firm of Orbis in Prague.

Intimate Sketches (Janáček)

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The music#

The thirteen pieces in the set, each only a minute or two long, were gathered from manuscripts and ephemeral publications, notably the People’s News (Lidové noviny). Nos. 5, 6, 7, and 8 here are Nos. 3, 5, 12, and 13 respectively in the Album for Kamila Stösslová (Památník pro Kamilu Stösslovou).

Recordings#

Håkon Austbø plays eleven of the pieces on his Janáček: Piano Works (Complete) (Brilliant Classics, 2005). Thomas Adès plays six of them on his recording of The Diary of One Who Disappeared with Ian Bostridge (EMI, 2001). Sarah Lavaud has recorded 5 of the pieces on a CD published by Hortus. has recorded all pieces except the ‘Rondo’ (a juvenile work) on his 3-CD Janacek compilation (HOFA, 2013).

Jenůfa

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Synopsis#

:Place: A Moravian village :Time: the nineteenth century The plot depends on a tangled set of village relationships. Before the opera begins, the mill-owner Grandmother Buryja had two sons. The elder married the widow of a man named Klemeň, became stepfather to her son Laca, and had a son of his own with her, Števa. The younger married twice, and had a daughter, Jenůfa, with his first wife. When the opera opens, Grandmother Buryja’s sons and their wives have died, except for the Kostelnička (the sacristan or sextoness of the village church), the younger son’s second wife and Jenůfa’s stepmother. Custom dictates that Števa alone, as the elder son’s only child, will inherit the mill, leaving his half-brother Laca and cousin Jenůfa to earn their livings.

Káťa Kabanová

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Roles#

Note: The name of the opera and the main character is usually transliterated in English as Káta, Kata or Katya because of the Czech diacritics.

Synopsis#

:Place: The Russian town of Kalinov on the shores of the Volga River :Time: The 1860s

Act 1#

Váňa Kudrjáš admires the view of the Volga River, which amuses the more literal-minded housekeeper of the adjoining Kabanov estate. Two men approach, Dikoj and his nephew, Boris Grigorjevič, where Dikoj is berating Boris. Dikoj learns that Kabanicha, the Kabanov family matriarch, is not at home. Dikoj leaves, and Boris explains to Váňa Kudrjáš why he tolerates the abuse: his parents are dead, and to be able to collect his inheritance, he must respect his uncle no matter what his uncle says to him. Boris also tells Váňa Kudrjáš that he is secretly in love with Káťa, the young wife of Tichon. Káťa appears and Kabanicha reproaches her son Tichon – Kaťa’s husband – for his inattentiveness. Tichon and Káťa try to calm her down, but Kabanicha will have none of it, telling Tichon that he spoils Káťa. Tichon complains to Varvara, the family’s foster daughter, who rebukes him for retreating into drinking more than defending Káťa. In the house, Káťa tells Varvara of her happy childhood, and dreams of having a man who truly loves her. Tichon enters to say good-bye, as he is journeying to Kazan on business, for Kabanicha. Káťa asks to accompany him or for him not to go, but he insists. Káťa then asks him to make her swear an oath to speak to no strangers during his absence, which puzzles Tichon. Kabanicha announces that Tichon must go, but not before instructing Káťa how to behave in his absence. Tichon dutifully says that Káťa must treat Kabanicha like her own mother and always act properly. He bows to Kabanicha and kisses her and Kát’a before he departs.

Lachian Dances

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Background#

Janáček began to compose the first set of instrumental arrangements of folk dances in 1888. The first performance took place on 11 January 1889 in Olomouc. The composition was reworked again in 1925, when Janáček made a new selection and ordering of numbers, including some changes in instrumentation. The work was printed in 1928, shortly before Janáček’s death, by Hudební matice in Prague.

Structure#

The work is split into six separate dances:

On an Overgrown Path

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Background#

Janáček composed all his most important works for solo piano between 1900 and 1912. He probably began preparing his first series of Moravian folk melodies in 1900. These melodies provided the basis for the first volume of On an Overgrown Path. Three of these compositions were first published in 1901 with the fifth volume of harmonium pieces, Slavic melodies, under the title On an overgrown path – three short compositions. On 30 September 1911, Janáček published the first piece of the second series in the Lidové noviny newspapers. The new series was created, in its entirety, around 1911. The complete second book was printed by the Hudební matice in 1942. The première of the work took place on 6 January 1905 at the “Besední dům” Hall in Brno.

Our Father (cantata)

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Structure#

Our Father falls into five self-contained sections: * “Our Father, which art in heaven”, andante, in A major * “Thy will be done”, moderato, in B minor * “Give us this day our daily bread”, con moto, in E major * “Forgive us our trespasses”, adagio, in A major * “Lead us not into temptation”, energico moderato, in E minor.

Composition and performance history#

In the spring of 1901 the governors of an old women’s home in Brno were lent reproductions of Our Father, a cycle of paintings by the Polish artist Józef Męcina-Krzesz depicting Russian peasants in situations illustrative of the Lord’s Prayer. They decided to stage a series of tableaux vivants based on these paintings to be performed by a local theatre group as a fundraising venture, and they commissioned Janáček to write “musical illustrations” for this entertainment. In May of that year he did so, setting the Lord’s Prayer in Czech for mixed voice chorus, tenor, harmonium and/or piano. The piece received its first performance at the National Theatre, Brno on 15 June 1901 under the title Moravský Otče náš (A Moravian Our Father), though Janáček later deleted the word Moravský on the grounds that it described the composer rather than the work. In 1906 Janáček rescored the work, replacing the piano and harmonium with harp and organ; this revised version was performed in November of that year at the Rudolfinum in Prague by the Czech Orchestral Music Society. The conductor at this performance was Adolf Piskáček, though Janáček had to take the last rehearsals, Piskáček being prevented by pressure of work. The work got mixed reviews and Janáček declared himself depressed by the performance, regretting the absence of the original tableaux vivants. In October 1924 Our Father and three others of his cantatas were performed in an ill-attended concert in Brno by the Beseda Philharmonic Society as part of the public celebrations of Janáček’s 70th birthday.

Pohádka

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Versions#

;First version The first version of Pohádka was in three movements, marked Introduction-Andante, Con moto, and Con moto. The autograph manuscript is dated 1910 and was not published. The composition was premièred in Brno on 13 March in Janáček’s presence, although it seems that at the time he was intending it to be part of a larger work. ;Second version The second version was in four movements and was first performed in September 1912. Janáček revised the work with the addition of a tranquil finale which also reprised part of the introduction, intended to depict the Tsarina singing a lullaby. ;Third version Janáček’s final version returned the piece to a three-movement form which differed little from the original. The Introduction and first movement of the 1912 version are joined with no separate titles and the last movement is omitted. In addition, Janáček altered many of the rhythms, removed a repeat from the third movement and made other revisions. It was first heard in Brno on 3 March 1923 and subsequently performed in Prague, Olomouc and in London during Janáček’s visit there in 1926. This version was published by Hudební Matice Umělecké Besedy in 1924.

Šárka (Janáček)

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Performance history#

The premiere of the Ur-version (1887) of Šárka took place on 26 November 2010 at the Reduta Studio Theatre Brno as part of the Janáček Biennale, conducted from the piano by Ondrej Olos, with Lucie Kašparová in the title role. This first version (of which 30% of the music is retained in the score generally performed today) was sent to Dvořák for comment, but rested in the Janáček archive until 2010; the final version, with fewer motives and longer set-pieces, presages his mature works. The composer had never completed the work, but, after the success of his later operas, Šárka was revised and the orchestration completed by his pupil Osvald Chlubna who had been given the task in preparation for the opera’s eventual publication. In 2000, Jiří Zahrádka edited a new edition of the score. A recording was made later that year based on this edition, with Sir Charles Mackerras conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and with Eva Urbanová in the title role; it was issued the following year (Supraphon SU 3485-2-631). The premiere stage setting was designed by the architect and painter Vlastislav Hofman.

Sinfonietta (Janáček)

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Structure#

Sinfonietta is typical of Janáček’s tight construction in that the material of each movement derives from the opening motif. It features several variants based on Janáček’s original fanfare. : \relative c’ \clef bass \time 2/4 \set Staff.midiInstrument = #“trombone” \tempo “Allegretto” 2 = 72 2(\f ) ( ) \ s2 s2 ges8( ees ges4 ees ges8 ees) » The piece is in five movements, all of which have descriptive subtitles: The first movement is scored only for brass and percussion. The second movement begins with a rapid ostinato from the winds but later has a more lyrical episode. The third begins quietly in the strings but is interrupted by a stern figure in the trombones, leading to another fast dance-like passage. In the fourth movement, Janáček celebrates the newly liberated Czechoslovakia with a joyous trumpet fanfare. The finale begins in the key of E minor with a calm retrograde version of the opening melody. However, this quickly moves into a triumphant finale, the return of the opening fanfare decorated with swirling figures in the strings and wind.

String Quartet No. 1 (Janáček)

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Background#

The “Kreutzer Sonata” quartet was the first to be composed after a request from the Bohemian Quartet who, in 1923, requested Janáček to compose two string quartets for them. The second was the “Intimate Letters” quartet.

Structure and style#

“I was imagining a poor woman, tormented and run down, just like the one the Russian writer Tolstoy describes in his Kreutzer Sonata”, Janáček confided in one of his letters to his young friend Kamila Stösslová. In the music of the quartet is depicted psychological drama containing moments of conflict as well as emotional outbursts, passionate work rush towards catharsis and to final climax. The composition consists of four movements: The thematic idea central to the whole work is very similar to the theme of the composer’s Danube symphony (1923–25). Using a principle of thematic montage, the quartet almost abandons the fields of traditional harmony, homophony and counterpoint and instead makes free with the varied sonic factors typical of Janáček, including his characteristic modal inflections.

String Quartet No. 2 (Janáček)

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Background#

The “Intimate Letters” quartet was the second quartet to be composed on a commission from the Bohemian Quartet who, in 1923, had asked Janáček to compose two string quartets for them. The first of these was his “Kreutzer Sonata” quartet. The title “Intimate Letters” (“Listy důvěrné” in Czech) was given by the composer himself. The composition was intended to reflect the character of his relationship with Kamila Stösslová, who was forty years younger than the composer, and with whom he exchanged more than 700 letters during the course of their relationship. He wrote to her in one of these letters: :“I’m curious how my ‘Intimate Letters’ will work. It’s my first composition whose notes glow with all the dear things that we’ve experienced together. You stand behind every note, you, living, forceful, loving. The fragrance of your body, the glow of your kisses – no, really of mine. Those notes of mine kiss all of you. They call for you passionately.” The inspiration for the quartet, which was originally entitled Listy milostné, or Love Letters, was their first kiss at Luhacovice on August 19, 1927. Not only is the work dedicated to Stösslová, but the composer added a codicil to his will stipulating that she receive all of the royalties. Another important influence on the quartet is Zdeněk Fibich’s monumental piano cycle Nálady, dojmy a upominky (Moods, Impressions and Reminiscences). This ambitious work of 376 pieces chronicles the romance between Fibich and his beloved muse Anezka Schulzová. Janáček, in a letter quoted by Josephson, compared his relationship with Stösslová to Fibich’s, and vowed to embody her in the music of his quartet. The première of the work took place on 11 September 1928, a month after Janáček died. The composition was performed by the Moravian Quartet.

Taras Bulba (rhapsody)

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Music#

The music is scored for piccolo (doubling 3rd flute), 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets (1st doubling E clarinet), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon (doubling 3rd bassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, percussion (timpani, snare drum, suspended cymbal played with snare drum sticks, triangle, and bells), harp, organ, and strings. The music is in three movements: The first movement, The Death of Andrei, focuses on the Cossack Taras Bulba’s younger son, who falls in love with the daughter of a Polish general. The opening is a passionate episode between the lovers with solos by English horn, violin, and oboe. There are occasional hints of darkness throughout, and eventually the music grows more turbulent, showing a battle between the two armies: angry trombone barks, tolling bells, and triumphant trumpet calls. Andrei fights on the side of the Poles, but when his father nears him in the battle, he realizes his treachery, and lowers his head to be killed by Taras Bulba himself. In the end, there is a brief reminiscence of the love music. : The second movement, The Death of Ostap, focuses on Taras Bulba’s older son, who is overcome with grief by Andrei’s death. He is captured by the Poles during the battle and hauled off to Warsaw for torture and execution. Taras Bulba sneaks into Warsaw in disguise, and at the moment of Ostap’s death, he forgets where he is and calls out to his son. Much of the music is taken up with a kind of inexorable, limping march. In the end there is a wild mazurka as the Poles dance in triumph. Taras Bulba is personified by dark trombone statements, and Ostap’s last anguished cry is played by high clarinet. (There are clear parallels to two earlier orchestral execution scenes: in Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.) : In the final movement, The Prophecy and Death of Taras Bulba, the Cossacks fight madly throughout Poland to avenge Ostap. Taras Bulba is eventually captured in a battle on the Dnieper River, but before he is burned to death by the Polish army, he issues a defiant prophecy: “Do you think that there is anything in the world that a Cossack fears? Wait; the time will come when you shall learn what the orthodox Russian faith is! Already the people sense it far and near. A Tsar shall arise from Russian soil, and there shall not be a power in the world which shall not submit to him!” The opening music is filled with battle music and war-cries by Taras Bulba—the trombones again—until a quiet passage depicting his capture. The prophecy itself is a stirring passage for brass and organ, culminating in the ringing of bells and a triumphant epilogue. Just before the bells enter, there is a Moravian cadence at bar 169. :

The Cunning Little Vixen

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Name#

The opera’s libretto was adapted by the composer from a 1920 serialized novella, Liška Bystrouška, by Rudolf Těsnohlídek, which was first published in the newspaper Lidové noviny (with illustrations by Stanislav Lolek). For the title of the opera, Příhody means tales; lišky is the genitive of vixen. Bystroušky, still genitive, is the pun sharp, having the double meaning of pointed, like fox ears, and clever. The opera first became familiar outside Czechoslovakia in a 1927 German adaptation by Max Brod who provided the new name Das schlaue Füchslein, by which Germans still know it and which in English means The Cunning Little Vixen.

The Diary of One Who Disappeared

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Background#

On May 14, 1916, the Lidové noviny newspaper published verses titled From the Pen of a Self-Taught Writer. This diary-in-poems tells the story of an unnamed village boy who falls in love with the “black gipsy girl” Zefka (Žofka) and decides to leave his family and village with her. The diary made a deep impression on Leoš Janáček, a cooperator on Lidové noviny at that time, and he decided to rework it into a song cycle.

The Excursions of Mr. Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition history#

The composition of Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr. Brouček to the Moon was a long process complete with no fewer than seven librettists. The original concept of the opera was to be based on a still-popular novel series of the same name by Svatopluk Čech (1846–1908). After beginning the composition, Janáček set out to find a librettist who would fit his interpretation and realization of Čech’s stories. In the early 20th century, Janáček sought to write an opera based on Čech’s novels; however, Čech outrightly denied him the rights to his stories. Janáček eventually put the project aside until Čech’s death in 1908. At this time, Janáček was reminded of his previous desire to set the story and sent letters to Artuš Rektorys, a friend of his in Prague, asking him to check the availability of the rights now that Čech had died. Rektorys responded with news that Čech’s family was hesitant to release the rights, but after hearing from Janáček himself, they agreed to give him sole use of the novels. Shortly after being granted permission to begin composition, another composer, , had also written to Rektorys inquiring about Janáček’s Brouček. Moor claimed he was given sole permission to the stories by Čech’s younger brother, Vladimír. This matter was quickly attended to and it was found that Moor had not received valid permission. This did not stop him from producing an opera; it reached the stage in 1910, some ten years before Janáček’s, but with none of the latter’s success or longevity. In March 1908, Janáček had set out to find a suitable librettist. Rektorys had recommended Karel Mašek; however, Mašek was not overly willing to undertake the assignment, a precursor to future trouble with the piece. After many discussions and a warning from Mašek that he was very much preoccupied, Janáček had sent his needs to Mašek with a deadline for Act I’s completion. By July 1908 it had become increasingly clear that Mašek and Janáček had two very different ideas as to the outcome of Brouček. Mašek wrote that Janáček’s ideas were too far from the original novel, which portrayed Brouček as haughty. Other conflicting views include the addition of two characters not in the original piece, the Young Waiter and Mazal. With the Young Waiter, Mašek conceded, but said this about Mazal: …I can’t bring myself to add this part to Čech’s work in addition to Mazal at the Vikàrka. Čech’s Mr. Brouček would never have fraternized with Mazal and sat with him in the same pub. These disagreements paired with Mašek’s over-commitment with other works at the time led to his self-dismissal from the project in October of the same year. Janáček rebounded quickly from the loss of the librettist and started investigating a replacement. In November 1908, Josef Holý was invited to the project, but he refused due to lack of interest in the material and said “If there is not the will or the right mood, it would not turn out well, however, I tried, and so I ask you to count me out.” With Holý gone, Janáček turned to Dr. Zikmund Janke, an ear, nose and throat doctor working both in Prague and Luhačovice. As with Mašek, there was a general disagreement between what Janáček had in mind and what Dr. Janke envisioned. Janáček was very amiable with colleagues and accepted what Janke had given him, including his harsh words. At this point, Janke had written an entire first act and started on the second when Janáček sent him a new outline to follow with new characterizations for ten of the roles. Out of all that was written thus far, only two lines of a drinking song survived the final cuts of Janke’s work in the first act. In 1910, Janáček discovered through letters with Artuš Rektorys that Josef Holý, who originally turned down the project, had produced a ballet entitled The Moon. This shows that Holý had more interest than he had previously let on, as the ballet was conceptualized on Čech’s story of Brouček. In April 1911 Janáček reconnected with Holý asking for help with a song during the Moon scene. The next librettist was introduced to Janáček by Holý to help spread the workload around. František Gellner, a satirical poet, would eventually contribute the most work to the piece that still survives today of all the librettists that worked on the project. They worked together from June 1912 until June 1913, where a standstill took place and Janáček set to work on other projects. Gellner did write an ending to the piece, so why the pause happened is really only known to Janáček, as conceptually the structure was finished with only details remaining. However, the work resumed in November 1915 when Janáček decided that Brouček was worth finishing and promptly set to work finding the next librettist in line for the job. The position went to Josef Peška, one of the men who helped secure Jenůfa in Prague. With great enthusiasm, he joined the list of writers who had accepted the work without reading the previously written libretto or musical score. Once Peška had read all the provided materials he sent a prompt response to Janáček reminding him to observe other people’s renditions of the same piece. Most importantly he told Janáček a piece of information that will come back as critics review the opera after it reaches the stage, and that is that one needs to know Čech’s story in order to understand the humor in Janáček and Gellner’s version. He wrote a very private version, where one must have preexisting knowledge of the storyline to fully appreciate the piece. In addition, he sent him a list of new librettists who could help complete the project, with F.S. Procházka at the top. It is unclear whether Janáček sent Gellner’s ending to the opera to Procházka, because he created one of his own, starting with Act 3 until the end. Janáček gave his librettist complete freedom in range when it came to writing. He would provide an action, then state his indifference to how the action is accomplished, only that it needed to be. When something did not work for him, he would simply rewrite it himself. With this practice, Janáček wrote a larger piece of the work than most of the librettists did. The piece was finished in 1916 with only details remaining, including the ending written by Gellner, and then adjusted by Janáček. A friend of Janáček, Jiří Mahen, was then enlisted to help overhaul sections of the opera. This position was used for editing purposes, but mostly the work that Janáček had provided, not necessarily the work of the other librettists. Mahen was uninformed as to how many others had worked on the piece, and was also unaware that it was actually completely done and set to music. After spending much time on the opera, Mahen was also surprised to learn that not only had the work been finished, but that Viktor Dyk had been penned as the librettist. Janáček explained this in a letter to Mahen (naturally, he demanded satisfaction) saying that Dyk had approved of the original version Janáček had in mind, that so many others tried to change and had then supplied a more appropriate ending that fits more to Čech’s ending of the story. Dyk and Janáček had worked diligently changing around music, text, scenes, characters, etc. to their liking, keeping only bits and pieces of what others had done. Mašek’s work was reduced to two lines of work and Dr. Janke’s work to a drinking song. The rest was removed in letters between Dyk and Janáček from Brno to Prague and vice versa. Viktor Dyk was arrested for resistance activities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so again Janáček was in need of a new partner. Instead of finding a stranger to the piece, he went back to F.S. Procházka and asked his help in fine-tuning a few songs and scene changes, which he gladly accepted. Up until this point the opera ended when Mr. Brouček returns from his ‘Moon voyage’ only to find out that it was a drunken dream, but after reteaming with Procházka, Janáček posed the idea to start dramatizing the second Čech novel, The Excursions of Mr. Brouček to the XV Century. The two quickly leaped on this idea and began writing at once. By the end of 1918, they had compressed the entire opera into three acts, Act 1 in Prague in 1920, Act II on the Moon, and Act 3 in Prague in 1420. They even added a new set of characters that stayed with the opera’s theme of recurring characters through this new third act (see list of characters). In October 1918 Janáček had learned that Brouček would be performed at the National Theatre in Prague, given some adjustments to be made to costumes and set pieces. With the new trimmed-down version with three acts, there were fewer scene changes to be made, which pleased National Theatre Director Schmoranz. After discussions, casting, and orchestra rehearsal; there where still a few changes needed to be made, most being vocal range issues. (Janáček wrote very high tessitura for singers).

The Makropulos Affair (opera)

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Composition history#

Janáček had seen the play early in its run in Prague on 10 December 1922 and immediately saw its potential as an opera. He entered into a correspondence with Čapek, who was accommodating towards the idea, but legal problems in securing the rights to the play delayed work. When these problems resolved on 10 September 1923, Janáček began work on the opera. By December 1924, he had completed the first draft. He spent another year refining the score, completing it on 3 December 1925. Musically, much of the piece has little in the way of thematic development, instead presenting the listener with a mass of different motifs and ideas. Janáček’s writings indicate that this was deliberate, to give musical embodiment to the disruptive, unsettling main character Emilia Marty/Elina Makropulos. Only at the end of the final act, when Makropulos’ vulnerability is revealed, does the music tap into and develop the rich lyrical vein that has driven it throughout.

The Wandering Madman

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Background and structure#

In June 1921, Janáček attended a lecture in Prague given by Tagore. He later mentioned the lecture in an article for the Lidové noviny newspaper. He took down the writer’s “speech melodies” and apparently found an inspiration in his poems. The next year, from July to November, he composed a choral work based on a poem by Tagore. The poem was translated to the Czech language under the title Potulný šílenec (transl. F. Balej). The Wandering Madman premiered in Rosice u Brna on 21 September 1924 in a performance by Pěvecké sdružení moravských učitelů (PSMU) (The Choral Society of Moravian Teachers) with soprano solo Eliška Janečková and conductor Ferdinand Vach. The same year, the composition was performed with the composer in attendance in Prague’s Mozarteum, as a part of a concert organized by the Prague Conservatory. The composition is scored for soprano, tenor, baritone and TTBB choir. The duration of the work is approximately five minutes. The autograph is dated 12 November 1922. The Janáček specialist Alena Němcová wrote about the composition: “Janáček in this work examines the human fate and looks back on the extremely difficult finding his own way, in which each step was a step of fierce searching. In the fate of the wandering madman, who again looks for a “touchstone”, we see a true picture of Janáček’s life…” The gravestone of the Janáček’s grave at the Brno Central Cemetery in Brno bears a copy of several bars of the autograph manuscript and the inscription “… with his strength gone, and his heart in the dust, like a tree …”, borrowed from the work.

The Wandering of a Little Soul

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Background#

Janáček started to write the concerto in 1926, during his visit to England. The work remained unfinished, and today there are three sources containing the body of the composition. None of the manuscripts are dated. The sketched material of the concerto is concentrated in one movement only (12–15 min. duration). The score has a few remarks: p. 29 – inscription “in a human being”, p. 30 – “the dear soul inborn in every human being”, p. 40 – “eagle”, p. 49 – “without the soul until the end”, p. 64 – “instruments die out”. In 1927 Janáček abandoned the idea of the concerto and used some of its material in the opera From the House of the Dead, particularly in the suite. In 1928, the year of his death, Janáček composed also incidental music to Schluck und Jau, a play by the German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, which contains violin solos closely related to motives known from The Wandering of a Little Soul. Miloš Štědroň and Leoš Faltus completed the composition in 1988. The first performance took place on September 29, 1988, in the Janáček Theatre in Brno, with Jan Stanovský on violin, Petr Vronský conducted the State Philharmonic of Brno. Even though the concerto remained unfinished, it contains several interesting examples of Janáček’s mature style.

Violin Sonata (Janáček)

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Background#

It took almost thirty-five years before Janáček returned to the composition of music for the same combination of instruments. The sonata was created in the period of composer’s marked interest in chamber music (Piano Trio (now lost), 1908, Pohádka (Fairy Tale) for cello and piano, 1910), and also at the beginning of World War I. The composer himself remembers: “…in the 1914 Sonata for violin and piano I could just about hear sound of the steel clashing in my troubled head…”. The Sonata was printed after many corrections in mid-1922 by Hudební matice in Prague. Its first performance was given by violinist František Kudláček with Jaroslav Kvapil at the piano on 24 April 1922 at the concert of new Moravian music organized by the Young Composer’s Club in Brno. The first performance abroad took place in Frankfurt in 1923. The violin part was performed by the German composer Paul Hindemith.

Youth (wind sextet)

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Background#

The first impulse to compose a woodwind sextet came into Janáček’s mind during his visit of the festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music in Salzburg in August 1923. Albert Roussel´s Divertimento for Wind Quintet and Piano was performed here, and it is possible that this composition motivated Janáček’s interest to create a similar work. Another important impulse came to Janáček with a short piece called March of the Blue-Boys for piccolo, bells and tambourine (or piano). It was written in May 1924 as a reminiscence of Janáček’s youth in the Old Brno Monastery. He had probably already decided to write a more extensive work. The composition was created during Janáček’s three weeks stay in Hukvaldy in July, 1924. At the beginning of the autumn 1924, during the rehearsals, Janáček made a number of changes to the score. The premiere took place on October 21, 1924, in Besední dům in Brno. The players consisted of the Brno Conservatory teachers Josef Bok (flute and piccolo), Matěj Wagner (oboe), Stanislav Krtička (clarinet), František Janský (horn), and the members of the Brno National Theatre Orchestra František Bříza (bassoon) and Karel Pavelka (bass clarinet). Unfortunately, the performance wasn’t very successful. The oboist finally managed to repair a defect of his instrument, but the clarinettist, because of a broken key spring only pretended to be playing. Janáček was very angry. However, the work was performed in Prague on November 25, 1924, this time with members of the Czech Philharmonic, and the performance was received with great success. A pocket score, parts and piano arrangement by Břetislav Bakala were published in January 1925 by Hudební matice. Youth in 1925 was awarded the Prize of the Czech Academy of Sciences.