Leos Janácek (1854-1928)

There are few composers of the 20th century whose operatic output has exercised such a strong grip on the repertoire, and whose music speaks with such directness to audiences nearly a century after its composition.

The life

Born Hukvaldy, Moravia, July 3, 1854; died Moravská Ostrava, August 12, 1928

The ninth of 14 children, Janácek was brought up in the magnificent mountains and forests of north-eastern Moravia on the Polish border. When he was 11, his father, the village schoolmaster, decided to send him to the Augustine monastery in Brno, the Moravian capital, where the choirmaster was a family friend. From there Janácek graduated to the Brno Teachers’ Training College (1872-74), the Organ School (College of Music) in Prague (1874-75) thence to the Leipzig and Vienna Conservatories. He returned to Brno, married and settled into teaching and conducting locally. It was, in a nutshell, a fairly dull story.

Like Bartók and Kodály in Hungary, like Vaughan Williams and Holst in England, Janácek became fascinated by his country’s folk music and set off with a friend (Frantisek Bartos) to collect folk material. Certain elements of this found its way into his early compositions; he evolved a theory that music should follow the rhythms of human speech, of animal and bird noises. For the next twenty years, Janácek continued to live and work in Brno in total obscurity, writing no music of any significance.

It wasn’t till his late forties that he found his own distinctive voice in his opera Jenufa. It was first performed in Brno just before Janácek’s 50th birthday. It took another 12 years to reach Prague. In other words, Janácek was 62 when the world of music discovered this unorthodox and original composer. He had 12 more years to live and, though he had not stopped composing after the initial triumph of Jenufa, an intense period of creative activity ensued including the production of the Glagolitic Mass, the Sinfonietta and two extraordinary string quartets. The foundation of the Czech republic in 1918 further inspired him. Freedom from German domination and his love of Russia and the Russian language provided further spurs to his endeavours. A further catalyst was Janácek’s love life. In 1917 he had an affair with one of the singers in the Prague production of Jenufa and the next year met Kamila Stösslová, the pretty wife of an antiques dealer. Her husband had been able to provide food for the Janáceks during the war and Janácek was later in a position to save the Stössls from being expelled as aliens. He became infatuated with Kamila (he’d separated from his wife) and began a voluminous correspondence in the last 16 months of his life amounting to nearly 700 letters. Kamila did not reciprocate his feelings but Janácek transformed her into the heroine of three of his final works - Kat’a Kabanová, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropoulos Affair. She was also the inspiration for his song-cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared. His creative urges were undiminished when he caught a cold after a walk in the woods near his home village. This turned into bronchial pneumonia from which he died aged 74.

The music

The final 24 years of Janácek’s life won him a place among the greatest of Czech composers, up there with Dvorák and Smetana. Most of Dvorák’s best known works had been written by the time he was 35; Janácek had to wait three-quarters of his life before receiving any recognition. There was only 14 years between the ages of the two of them; their mature music has half a century of difference.

The sound world he created is as individual in its way as that of Debussy or Stravinsky. The main features of his creative impulse were Nature and folk music; equally important in his vocal works was his adaptation of the abrupt speech patterns of his native Lachian dialect into musical phrases. There’s much declaiming, rather than singing, with the orchestra taking what melody there is. No wonder he’s been called ‘The Moravian Mussorgsky’: both of them used peasant music and the folk music of their respective countries; both evolved their melodies from speech patterns (‘melodies of the language’ as Janácek called them). He felt that under different circumstances, peoples’ speech patterns alter, and so must the nature of the melody. He was not a skilled technician as a composer (same as Mussorgsky!) and, like the Russian again, what his music loses in sophistication and polish he gains in force and passion.

Key works

Sinfonietta. Taras Bulba. The Cunning Little Vixen suite Czech PO / Sir Charles Mackerras (Supraphon)

String Quartet No 1, "The Kreutzer Sonata" Pavel Haas Quartet (Supraphon)

String Quartet No 2, "Intimate Letters" Pavel Haas Quartet (Supraphon)

Piano Sonata 1.X.1905 Charles Owen (Somm)

Glagolitic Mass Soloists; CBSO & Chorus / Simon  Rattle (EMI)

The Cunning Little Vixen Sir Charles Mackerras (Decca) Read original LP review

The Excursions of Mr Broucek Jiri Belohlavek (DG)

The House of the Dead Sir Charles Mackerras (Decca)  Read original LP review

The Makropoulos Affair Sir Charles Mackerras (Decca)  Read original LP review

Jenufa Sir Charles Mackerras (Decca)  Read original LP review

Kat'a Kabanová Sir Charles Mackerras (Decca)  Read original LP review

Janácek in the Archive

Read Sir Charles Mackerras on Kat'a Kabanová in October 1977