Leos Janáček (1846-1928)

Leos Janáček was born in 1846 in a region of Czechoslovakia known as Moravia. Moravia, the eastern part of the Czech geographical region (at the time made up of Mavia, Bohemia, and parts of Silesia,) has a rich tradition of lyrical folk music. Janáček collected, transcribed and arranged much of this music, and it was to inspire him throughout his career. Janáček was also fascinated by Czech speech patterns; he made a meticulous study of the rhythms and melodic contours of spoken conversation. His discoveries allowed him to create a rhythmically complex yet deeply rooted vocal vocabulary notoriously hard to translate into any other language. He believed that music is never abstract, saying: "I maintain that a pure musical note means nothing unless it is pinned down in life, blood, locale. Otherwise it is a worthless toy." A fiercely nationalistic man, Janáček wrote music that grew organically out of his country's history and living culture.

Born to a family of village schoolmaster-musicians, Janáček was sent at the age of 11 to become a chorister in a monastery. The choirmaster, himself a leading Moravian composer, took a special interest in his musical education. The boy went on to study at the conservatories in Leipzig and Vienna and at the famous Prague Organ School. He also took a degree at the Czech Teachers' Institute in the town of Brno, where he was to make his home.

As a music teacher in Brno, Janáček conducted choral societies, served as director of the local Organ School, produced concerts for the popular Beseda Club, and started a musical journal that reviewed local operatic events. He did not begin to compose his first small opera, Sárka, until the age of 33. The opera never saw the stage; the author of Sárka's verse libretto, who had intended the work for Dvorák, refused Janáček permission to develop it. However, it was during the composition of Sárka that Janáček first began to collect and study folk songs. This material fueled his next project, Pocatek Romanu (The Beginning of a Romance,) an opera about peasant life based on a short story by Gabriela Preissova. Janáček withdrew the opera after four performances, but soon found a much more absorbing subject-Preissova's play Jeji pastorkyna (alternately translated Her Step-Daughter or Her Foster Daughter.)

Janáček worked on Jenufa for roughly ten years. Its composition allowed him to develop his unique style, a fusion of western opera, Moravian folk music, and napevky, or speech melodies. One explanation for the opera's unusually long gestation period was lack of time: between teaching and conducting, Janáček had little time to compose. He was also a hopeless perfectionist, and the results of this are easily heard in the opera. His use of drama, form, content and simplicity create a work of deep feeling and folk art. Janáček infused the character Laca with a strong social message, and used the sensitive and moving figure of Jenufa to show his great love for his own dying daughter, Olga. In fact, Janáček played parts of the opera for Olga as she lay on her deathbed. The score was completed right at the time of Olga's untimely death at the age of 21. In 1917, as Janáček was preparing a second edition of the vocal score, he wrote:

Our maid (!) remembers that during her second year with us I began composing Jenufa. That means 1896. For me, composing was then a matter of stealing time. Being choir-master and organist, teacher of music at the Teacher's Training Institute, director of the Organ School, conductor of the Beseda Society concerts --my daughter on her death-bed-and having to live; it all made composing difficult and little of it was done. That is also why I remember it only with difficulty.

Although Jenufa was an immediate success in Brno, the possibility of a Prague production was blocked by the Prague opera's hostile chief conductor. In the mean time Janáček wrote two largely unsuccessful operas, Osud (Fate) and Vylety pane Brouckovy (The Excursions of Mr Broucek.) When Jenufa was finally performed in Prague, ten years after its Brno premiere, Janáček's operatic career began to take off. The composer was 62.

As Janáček's name began to spread throughout Europe, he entered a period of prolific production. Adapting his own librettos, and often choosing subjects many would consider unoperatic, Janáček created some of the most intriguing, wise, and original works in the repertoire. The Makropulous Case is the story of a 337 year old woman who gives up the secret of immortality; The Cunning Little Vixen, which was based on a comic strip, chronicles the adventures of a clever fox; and From The House Of The Dead is adapted directly from Dostoyevsky's memoirs of life in a Siberian prison camp. Also dating from this period are some of Janáček's best-known orchestral works, including the Glagolitic Mass, the Nursery Rhymes, and the Sinfonietta.

These years of the composer's life were enlivened and inspired by his platonic relationship with Mrs. Kamila Stosslova, a young married woman he corresponded with for years. Their letters reveal the intensity of their affection for each other, and she is thought by some to be the model for Janáček's many strong female characters.

Janáček died at age 74, at the peak of his powers, after having just completed From The House of the Dead.