Leoš Janáček

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Leoš Janáček with his wife in 1881
Leoš Janáček with his wife in 1881

Leoš Janáček ([ˈlɛoʃ ˈjanaːtʃɛk] (help·info)) (July 3, 1854 – August 12, 1928), was a Czech composer. He was inspired by Czech, Moravian and all Slavic folk music and on these roots created his original style. His most celebrated compositons include the symphonic poem Sinfonietta, the oratorial Glagolitic Mass, the rhapsody Taras Bulba, the instrumental cycle Lachian Dances, and his string quartets and operas.

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[edit] Life and work

Janáček was born in Hukvaldy, Moravia, (then part of the Austrian Empire), the son of a schoolmaster. In 1865 he enrolled as a ward of the foundation of the Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno, where he took part in choral singing and occasionally played the organ. In 1874 went to Prague to study music at Prague organ school and made a living as a music teacher. He also conducted various amateur choirs.

From October 1879 to February 1880 he studied piano, organ, and composition at the Leipzig Conservatory; among his teachers there were Oskar Paul and Leo Grill. From April to June 1880 he studied composition at the Vienna Conservatory with Franz Krenn.

In Leipzig Janáček composed Thema con variazioni for piano in B flat subtitled Zdenka’s Variations.

In 1881 he returned to Brno, where he married Zdenka Schulzová. He was appointed director of the organ school, a post he held until 1919, when the organ school became the Brno Conservatory. In 1888 he attended the performance in Prague of Tchaikovsky’s music, and he met the older composer personally. At that time he also started a systematic study and collection of folk songs, dances and music. In 1903 his daughter Olga died.

In 1905 Janáček attended a demonstration in support of a Czech university in Brno, which inspired his composition of the 1. X. 1905 piano sonata.

In 1916 he started a long professional and personal relationship with theatre critic, dramatist and translator Max Brod. When Jenůfa was performed in Prague in 1916 it was a great success, and brought Janáček his first acclaim; he was 62. A year later he met Kamila Stösslová, a young married woman who was an inspiration to him for the remaining years of his life, and with whom he conducted an obsessive correspondence – passionate on his side at least. In 1924, the year of his 70th birthday, the first biography of Janáček was published by Max Brod. In 1925 he retired.

In 1926 Janáček travelled to England, The Netherlands and Germany. In August 1928, along with Kamila Stösslová and her son Otta, he made an excursion to Štramberk. Soon after this Janáček became ill, and died in the sanatorium of Dr. L. Klein in Ostrava. He is buried at the Central Cemetery in Brno.

[edit] Style

In 1874 Janáček became friends with Antonín Dvořák, and began composing in a relatively traditional romantic style, but after his opera Šárka (1881), his style began to change. He made a study of Moravian and Slovak folk music and used elements of it in his own music. He especially focused on studying and reproducing the rhythm and the pitch contour and inflections of normal Czech speech, which helped in creating the very distinctive vocal melodies in his opera Jenůfa (1904). Going much farther than Modest Mussorgsky and anticipating the later work of Béla Bartók in such styles, Janáček made this a distinguishing feature of his vocal writing (Samson 1977).

He is best known for the music he wrote from this point to the end of his life. Although many consider his output from this period to mark his mature style, he had been writing in this fashion for quite a number of years but had simply not received wide public acclaim earlier.

Much of Janáček's work displays great originality and individuality. His work is tonal, although it employs a vastly expanded view of tonality. He also uses unorthodox chord spacings and structures, often making use of modality: "there is no music without key. Atonality abolishes definite key, and thus tonal modulation....Folksong knows of no atonality." (Hollander 1963) He features accompaniment figures and patterns, with according to Jim Samson, "the on-going movement of his music...similarly achieved by unorthodox means—often a discourse of short, 'unfinished' phrases comprising constant repetitions of short motives which gather momentum in a cumulative manner." (Samson 1977)

[edit] Legacy

Janáček belongs to a wave of 20th century composers who were seeking greater realism and greater connection with everyday life, combined with a more all-encompassing use of musical resources. His operas in particular demonstrate the use of "speech"-derived melodic lines, folk and traditional material, and complex modal musical argument. Janáček's works are still regularly performed around the world, and are generally considered popular with audiences. He would also inspire later composers in his homeland, as well as music theorists, among them Jaroslav Volek, to place modal development alongside of harmony in importance in music.

Many see the operas Káťa Kabanová (1921), The Cunning Little Vixen (1924), The Makropulos Affair (1926) and From the House of the Dead (after a novel by Dostoevsky, premiered in 1930, after his death) as his finest works. The conductor Sir Charles Mackerras has become particularly closely associated with them.

His chamber music, while not especially voluminous, includes works which are generally considered to be "in the standard repertory" as 20th century classics, particularly his two string quartets: Quartet No. 1, "The Kreutzer Sonata" inspired by the Tolstoy novel, and the Quartet No. 2, "Intimate Letters".

At Frankfurt am Main modern music festival in 1926 Ilona Štěpánová-Kurzová performed the world premiere of Janáček's Concertino; the Czech premiere took place on February 16 1926 in Brno.

Other well known pieces by Janáček include the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass (the text written in Old Church Slavonic), Lachian Dances, and the rhapsody Taras Bulba. These pieces and the above mentioned four late operas were all written in the last decade of Janáček's life.

[edit] Selected Works

For the complete list see List of compositions by Leoš Janáček.

See also: Category:Compositions by Leoš Janáček

[edit] Operas

[edit] Orchestra

[edit] Vocal/Choral

  • Glagolitic Mass
  • Amarus (1897)
  • The Eternal Gospel (1914)
  • The Lord’s Prayer (1901)
  • Lord, have mercy (1896)
  • Elegy on the death of daughter Olga (1903)

[edit] Chamber/Instrumental

[edit] Piano

[edit] Janáček's music in film

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Allusions to Janáček's music (mostly instrumental) are heard throughout the 1988 film The Unbearable Lightness of Being based on the novel by Milan Kundera. The structure of Kundera's novel is based on musical form and eschews strict chronology. Among other works, the film quotes:

  • The Madonna of Frýdek, from the piano cycle On an Overgrown Path (1st series), serves as a theme for Tereza (Juliette Binoche). It is heard the first time she appears on the screen, recurs several times, including the final scene.
  • Good Night from the same piano cycle is used to accompany the dog's dying and interment.
  • String Quartet No. 2 "Intimate Letters", especially the final movement, accompanies scenes of insecurity or imminent danger.
  • Violin Sonata
  • Pohádka (Fairy Tale) for cello and piano

Glagolitic Mass in its entirety provides the basis for the Kenneth Anger film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.

[edit] In popular culture

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Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

[edit] Media

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Sources

  • Tyrrell, John (2006/7). 'Janáček: Years of a Life', London - A two-volume biography of the composer
  • Samson, Jim (1977). Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900–1920, p.67. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393021939.
  • Hollander, Hans (1963). Janáček, p.119. London.
  • Drlíková, Eva: Leoš Janáček, Život a dílo v datech a obrazech / Chronology of his life and work. Brno: Opus Musicum, 2004. ISBN 80-903211-1-9
  • Chisholm, Erik (1971) The Operas of Leoš Janáček ISBN 0080128548.