Biography
A much underrated composer, Janácek ranks among the greatest of creative forces ever to have emerged from Czechoslovakia.
Rather oddly he wrote nothing of any great consequence until he was in his sixties, but from that point on he never looked back.
His music has an incredible rhythmic vitality about it whilst at times also being hauntingly romantic.
Janácek was fascinated by Czechoslovakian folk culture, and this proved to be a tremendous source of inspiration which is clearly reflected in his music.
He was one of a family of fourteen and by all accounts an extremely bright child whose talent for music was recognised by his father quite early on.
His parents were not well off and they sent young Leos off to the monastery school, where there was a talented teacher of music from whom Janacek was to gain an extremely good grounding in the subject.
He eventually decided to train as a music teacher and ended up teaching at the monastery school where he himself had been a pupil.
Not surprisingly, being a teacher didn’t provide the creative stimulus for which he yearned, and this is evident in his early compositions which are, in the main, pretty dull and lacking in any kind of real character.
Janácek was well aware of this and had the necessary self-motivation to get some money together and head off for Prague, where he took a crash course at the Organ School in search of both knowledge and inspiration.
He left after a year with an impressive set of certificates and qualifications and then moved around various respected seats of learning, with the wish to start his own music college always in the back of his mind.
He had rather radical and, at the time, unconventional theories about music – two of which were that music should follow speech rhythms and that it should also relate to birdsong.
He felt passionately about this, and his ideas proved not to be quite as strange as they may at first have seemed: a number of composers since have modelled their works in this way with quite beautiful results – listen to Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques for a stunning example of birdsong translated into music.
Time rolled on but Janácek failed to make any significant impact on the music business, though he continued to pursue his interest in speech rhythms and nationalistic folk music.
His big break finally came in 1916, when the National Opera in Prague agreed to stage his opera Jenufa.
It was a complete success and before long the opera was being performed all over Europe.
In the remaining twelve years of his life Janácek went on to write maybe a dozen really excellent pieces, a mixture of operas, choral, solo and chamber music.
At the age of sixty-four, whilst still married, he fell deeply in love with another woman, who played a significant role in inspiring the old man to compose probably his finest works – one of which is the string quartet appropriately entitled ‘Intimate Letters’.
Jenufa
1904, Opera
The script for this opera is intensely tragic and the music matches it perfectly. It tells the story of a young girl who has a baby by an unscrupulous ne’er-do-well. Living in shame, she keeps the baby hidden from her neighbours until, one day, her mother drowns the child in the river, putting it under the ice. In a horrifying climax, the ice melts and the tiny corpse is found.
Taras Bulba
Taras Bulba: ‘Death of Andrey’
1918, Orchestral
‘Taras Bulba’ is a story by Gogol which Janácek set to music in 1915 to celebrate the fact that ‘there is no fire nor suffering in the whole world which can break the strength of the Russian people’, which is symbolised in the death by fire of the hero of the tale. This is a symphonic work in three movements that portrays in some detail the events of the story.
Taras Bulba is a captain in the Zaporozhy Cossacks whose two sons, Andri and Ostap, are fighting with him in a war against the Poles. In the first movement, Taras actually executes Andri for helping a Polish girl who is his fiancée – an example of true patriotism. Ostap, the other son, dies in the second movement after having been captured by the enemy. Taras witnesses the public execution and then slips away unnoticed. In the final movement Taras avenges his son’s death but ultimately is taken prisoner himself. Nailed to a tree, he is condemned to death by burning. As the flames rise, he sees his men make a daring escape from the Poles. In his final vision, he prophesies the eventual triumph of his people.
The music finishes with a set of rousing chords that rise higher and higher, leading to a grand theme that expresses perfectly the undying spirit of the Russian people.
Glagolitic Mass
1926, Choral
Janácek wrote this powerful choral work with a view to having it performed outdoors, though this rarely occurs.
Sinfonietta
Sinfonietta: Allegretto
1926, Orchestral
Like his Czech predecessors such as Dvorák and Smetana, Janácek was fascinated by the folk melodies of his native land, and used to spend much of his time investigating the popular musical traditions of Czechoslovakia. However, he almost never used actual folk tunes, preferring to build his own personal style on rhythmic and melodic traits of the folk music found in the area where he was born, near the Polish border. This Sinfonietta, therefore, is a simple, unpretentious work in a folk vein and is characteristic of many of his earlier works.
The first movement (Allegretto – Allegro – Maestoso) is played, essentially, by eleven trumpets, two tubas and kettle-drums and consists of a series of very short, often repeated phrases, whereas the following section is somewhat longer and uses more of the orchestra.
Muted strings create a flowing melody which is taken up by woodwinds and brass to create a climax for the third movement (Moderato – Con moto – Prestissimo). The penultimate section has a light, dance-like quality and changing rhythms that leads neatly to the final movement, which opens with three flutes introducing the new main theme which is passed around the orchestra while the strings maintain a murmuring background accompaniment.
The whole work ends with a complete run-through of the first movement but with extra woodwinds and strings.
Intimate Letters
String Quartet No. 2 (‘Intimate Letters’)
1928, Chamber Music
This is the second of two string quartets of a very personal nature as far as the composer was concerned: they are based on over 600 letters Janácek wrote to a young married woman in the last years of his life.
Wandering of a Soul
Violin Concerto (‘Wandering of a Soul’): Andante
1928, Concerti, Orchestral
The violin concerto ‘Wandering of a Soul’ was inspired by the violin theme from the opening of one of Janácek’s operas – ‘From the House of the Dead.’