When it comes to Czech music, three great names immediately come to mind. The first in this brilliant series was, the second was, and the foundations that they laid were destined to be strengthened and developed by Leos Janacek.
Like his two predecessors, Leos Janacek was born at a time when the Czech Republic was under Austrian rule. He was born into a large family of a schoolteacher, a far from rich man; Leos had thirteen brothers and sisters (he himself was the ninth child among them). In a mountain village called Hukvaldy, one teacher was forced to teach several subjects, including music. The father of the future composer coped with this responsibility perfectly - he played the violin and organ, and combined teaching at school with leading a choral society and working as a church organist. After his death, this position was taken by his wife (Leoš Janáček’s mother), who, in addition to the organ, played the guitar and also sang beautifully. Thus, the future composer in childhood learned in full what a lack of material wealth is, but he never experienced a lack of musical impressions, as well as in communication with nature; his childhood passed among picturesque mountains and forests. Throughout his life he carried with him love for his native land, sympathy for the poor and oppressed, and a respectful attitude towards the Moravian peasants.
Leoš's musical abilities manifested themselves early, moreover, the boy had an excellent treble - and at the age of eleven he became a chanter at the Starobrno Augustinian Monastery in the city of Brno. Here he not only participates in divine services as a singer, but also receives a musical education. He is taught composition by Pavel Krzyzkowski, a composer and researcher of Moravian musical folklore. The memory of his stay in the monastery was subsequently reflected in many of his works, including the Glagolitic Mass - one of Janáček’s best works.
In 1873, Janacek headed the Svyatopluk choral society, but he was thinking about continuing his education, and the ultimate dream was studying with Anton Grigorievich Rubinstein in St. Petersburg, but reality makes its own adjustments. For two years, starting in 1876, he studied at the Prague Organ School, and from 1878 he received his education at conservatories - in Leipzig, then in Vienna. But here they cannot teach him the main thing he strives for - creativity on a national basis; he has to go to this on his own. Features of national identity, combined with general romantic features, are already evident in his earliest works - “Zdenkin Variations” for piano, “Idylls” and Suite for string orchestra.
An important role in Janáček’s creative life was played by Frantisek Bartosz, a teacher, linguist and ethnographer. Together with him, starting in 1886, Janáček made several folklore expeditions, the result of which was the symphonic suite “Lash Dances” and many concert arrangements of folk songs.
Janáček's interest in folklore also manifests itself in the opera genre. In 1887 he created the opera “Sharka”, based on the medieval Czech legend about a warlike maiden. In this typical romantic opera, Czech melodies are present in abundance. The same applies to the second opera, “The Beginning of a Romance,” and to the ballet “Rakos Rakocsi.” However, the composer strives to embody on stage not the “hoary antiquity”, in which there is so much fiction and convention, but the “living blood” of modernity, to present in his works not great heroes, but ordinary people with their passions and sufferings. This is the opera “Her Stepdaughter” (“Jenufa”). In it, the composer avoids folklore quotations, but bases the musical language on the intonations of Moravian songs and colloquial speech, striving not so much for mellifluity as for truthfulness. Such an innovative work had to wait a long time for production.
Socially accusatory motives are also present in other works of Janáček - for example, the sonata “From the Street” is marked with the date of the dispersal of the demonstration in Brno (October 1, 1905), and choruses to the poems of Petr Bezruč caused such a violent reaction from the public that concerts at which they were performed and compared to socialist rallies.
The last years of Janacek's life were surprisingly fruitful. At this time, the Czech Republic gained freedom, and his work received recognition. The composer creates many chamber-instrumental works, vocal cycles, several operas, and two of them - “Katya Kabanova” and “From the House of the Dead” - are based on the works of Russian writers (Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky and Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, respectively). Somewhat earlier, he turned to the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, creating the symphonic poem “Taras Bulba”.
Leos Janacek passed away in 1928, having caught a cold while visiting his native village. The composer is buried in Brno, where his journey into musical art began.
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He is considered one of the most important Czech composers.
biography
early life
School in Hukvaldy, Janacek's maternity hospital
Leoš Janáčkova, son of schoolmaster Jiří (1815–1866) and Amalia (née Grulichová) Janáčkova (1819–1884), was born in Hukvaldy, Moravia (then part of the Austrian Empire). He was a gifted child in a family of limited means and showed early musical talent in choral singing. His father wanted him to follow the family tradition and become a teacher, but he was put off by Janáček's obvious musical abilities. In 1865, young Janáček entered the founding department of St. Thomas Abbey in Brno, where he took part in choral singing under Pavel Krizkavsky and sometimes played the organ. One of his classmates, František Neumann, later described Janáček as "an excellent pianist who played Beethoven symphonies excellently in piano duets with a classmate under Křížkovský's supervision". Křížkovský found him problematic and wayward as a student, but recommended his entry to the Prague Organ School. Janáček was later remembered by Křížkovský as a great conductor and teacher.
Janáček was originally intended to study piano and organ, but eventually devoted himself to composition. He wrote his first vocal compositions while the choirmaster Svätopluk Craft Association(1873-76). In 1874 he entered the Prague Organ School, under František Skuherský and František Blazek. His student days in Prague were impoverished; without any piano in his room, he had to make do with a keyboard drawn on his table. His criticism of Skuherský's performance in the Gregorian masses was published in the March 1875 edition of the magazine Cecil and led to his expulsion from school, but Skuherský relented, and on July 24, 1875, Janáček graduated at the top of his class.
Upon returning to Brno he earned his living as a music teacher, and conducted various amateur choirs. From 1876 he taught music at the Brno Teachers' Institute. Among his students was Zdenka Schulzová, daughter of Emilia Schulz, director of the institute. She was later to be Janacek's wife. In 1876 he also became a piano student of Amalia Wickenhauserová-Neruda, with whom he jointly organized chamber concerts and performed in concerts over the next two years. In February 1876 he was recognized as choirmaster Beseda brněnská Philharmonic. Apart from an interruption from 1879 to 1881, he remained its choirmaster and conductor until 1888.
From October 1879 to February 1880, he studied piano, organ and composition at the Leipzig Conservatory. While there, he wrote Theme of the scammer variazioni for piano B - flat, subtitle Zdenka's Variations. Dissatisfied with his teachers (among them Oscar Paul and Leo Grill), and rejected from a studentship with Camille Saint-Saëns in Paris, Janáček moved to the Vienna Conservatory, where from April to June 1880 he studied composition with Franz Krenn. He hid his opposition to Krenn's neo-romanticism, but he left Joseph Dachs's classes and further piano studies when he was criticized for his piano style and technique. He submitted a violin sonata (now lost) to the Vienna Conservatory competition, but the judges rejected it as "too academic". Janáček left the conservatory in June 1880, disillusioned, despite Franz Krenn's very flattering personal report. He returned to Brno, where on July 13, 1881, he married his young student Zdenka Schulzová.
Former school organ in Brno. Janacek lived in a small house in the garden of the villa. His garden house is today the Leoš Janáček Memorial.
In 1881, Janáček founded and was appointed director of the organ school, a post he held until 1919, when the school became the Brno Conservatory. In the mid-1880s, Janáček began composing more systematically. Among other works, he created four male choir voices(1886), dedicated to Antonin Dvořák, and his first opera, Sharka(1887-88). During this period, he began collecting and studying folk music, songs and dances. In the early months of 1887, he sharply criticized comic opera Grooms, Czech composer Karel Kovarovik, in Hudebni Listy magazine review?:? “What melody is stuck in your mind? What is the motive of this dramatic opera? No, I would like to write on the poster: “The comedy performed together with the music,” since the music and the libretto are not related to each other.” Janáček's review apparently led to mutual hostility and later professional difficulties when Kovařović, as director of the National Theater in Prague, refused to stage Janáček's opera Jenufa .
From the early 1890s, Janáček brought folklorist activity into the mainstream in Moravia and Silesia, using a repertoire of folk songs and dances in orchestral and piano arrangements. Most of his achievements in this field were published in 1899-1901, although his interest in folklore would last throughout his life. His compositional work was still influenced by the declarative, dramatic style of Smetana and Dvořák. He expressed a very negative opinion about German neoclassicism and especially Wagner's Listy Hudebni magazine, which he founded in 1884. The death of his second child, Vladimir, in 1890 followed an attempt at opera, starting from Romanesque(1891) and cantata Amarus (1897).
Later years and masterpieces
In the first decade of the 20th century, Janáček contributed to choral church music, including Otčenáš(Our Father, 1901), COMPONENT(1903) and Ave Maria(1904). In 1901, the first part of his piano cycle On the Overgrown Path was published and gradually became one of his most frequently performed works. In 1902, Janáček visited Russia twice. For the first time, he took his daughter Olga to St. Petersburg, where she stayed to study Russian. Only three months later, he returned to St. Petersburg with his wife, because Olga had become very ill. They took her to Brno, but her health deteriorated.
Janacek expressed painful feelings for his daughter in a new work, his opera Enuf, in which the suffering of his daughters had already been transformed in Jenufa years. When Olga died in February 1903, Janacek, dedicated Jenufa her memory. The opera was performed in Brno in 1904, with reasonable success, but Janáček felt that it was no more than a provincial achievement. He sought recognition at the more influential Prague Opera, but Enuf refused there (twelve years passed before his first performance in Prague). Dejected and emotionally exhausted, Janacek went to Luhačovice to restore the spa. There he met Kamil Urválkova, whose love story provided the theme for his next opera, Osud (Destiny).
In 1905, Janáček attended a demonstration in support of the Czech University in Brno, where the violent death of František Pavlík, a young carpenter, at the hands of the police was inspired by his piano sonata, 1. X. 1905 (from the street). The incident led him to further develop an anti-German and anti-Austrian ethos Russian Circle, which he co-founded in 1897 and which would be officially banned by the Austrian police in 1915. In 1906, he approached the Czech poet Bezruč, with whom he later collaborated, composing several choral works based on Bezruč's poetry. These include Cantor Halfar (1906), Maryčka Magdonova(1908), and Sedmdesát suffering from tuberculosis (1909).
Janáček's life in the first decade of the 20th century was complicated by personal and professional difficulties. He still craved artistic recognition from Prague. He destroyed some of his works, others were left unfinished. However, he continued to compose, and would create several remarkable choral, chamber, orchestral and operatic works, most notably the 1914 cantatas, Věčne Evangelium (Everlasting Gospel), Pohadka (Fairy tale) for cello and piano (1910), the 1912 piano cycle V mlhach (In Mists) and his first symphonic poem Šumařovo dítě (violinist's child). His fifth opera Vylet Pan Broučka make Měšice, consisting of 1908 to 1917, has been described as the most "purely Czech in theme and treatment" of all Janáček's operas.
In 1916, he began a long professional and personal relationship with the theater critic, playwright and translator Max Brod. In the same year, Enuf, revised by Kovařovic, was finally accepted by the National Theatre. His performance in Prague in 1916 was a great success and brought Janáček his first recognition. He was 62. After the Prague premiere, he began a relationship with singer Gabriela Horvatova, which led to his wife Zdenka's suicide attempt and their "unofficial" divorce. A year later (1917), he met Kamila Stosslav, a young married woman 38 years his junior, who was to inspire him for the remaining years of his life. He carried out an obsessive and (on his side, at least) passionate correspondence with her, nearly 730 letters. From 1917 to 1919, deeply inspired by Stösslová, he composed Diary of a Disappeared Person. When he completed his final version, he began his next work, Camila, an opera Katya Kabanova .
Kamil Stosslav with his son Otto in 1917
In 1920, Janáček resigned as director of the Brno Conservatory, but continued to teach until 1925. In 1921, he attended a lecture by the Indian philosopher-poet Rabindranath Tagore and used Tagore's poem as the basis for the chorus Wandering Madman(1922). At the same time, he encountered the microtonal work of Alois Hab. In the early 1920s, Janáček completed his opera Cheat Vixen which was inspired by a serialized short story in the newspaper Lidove Novina.
In Janáček's 70th year (1924), his biography was published by Max Brod, and he was interviewed by Olin Downes for The New York Times. In 1925 he retired from teaching, but continued to compose and was awarded the first honorary doctorate to be given from Masaryk University in Brno. In the spring of 1926 he created his Sinfonietta, a monumental orchestral work that quickly received widespread critical acclaim. That same year he went to England at the invitation of Rose of Newmarch. A number of his works were performed in London, including his first string quartet, the Wind Sextet youth, and his violin sonata. Soon after this, and as early as 1926, he began composing a setting to an Old Church Slavonic text. The result was a large-scale orchestral Glagolitic Massa. Janáček was an atheist, and critical of the organized church, but religious themes often appear in his work. [ Dead link]The Glagolitic Mass was partly inspired by the suggestion of a clerical friend and partly by the wishes of Janáček, to celebrate the anniversary of the independence of Czechoslovakia,
In 1927 - the year of the Sinfonietta's first performances in New York, Berlin and Brno - he began composing his last operatic work, From the dead house, the third act, which was found on his desk after his death. In January 1928 he began his second string quartet, then Intimate Letters, his "Manifesto of Love". Meanwhile, the Sinfonietta was performed in London, Vienna and Dresden. In recent years, Janacek has become an international celebrity. He became a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1927, along with Schoenberg and Hindemith. His opera and other works were finally performed on stages around the world.
In August 1928, he took Štramberskaya's excursion with Kamil Stosslav and her son Otto, but caught a cold, which developed into pneumonia. He died on August 12, 1928 in Ostrava, in the sanatorium of Dr. L. Klein. He received a large public funeral, which included music from the last episode of his Cheat Vixen and was buried in the area of honor at the Central Cemetery of the city of Brno.
personality
Olga Janáčkova
Janacek worked tirelessly throughout his life. He headed the organ school, was a professor at the Institute of Teachers and Gymnasium in Brno, collected his “speech melodies” and composed them. From an early age he presented himself as an individualist and his strongly stated opinions often led to conflict. He strongly criticized his teachers, who considered him a brash and anti-authoritarian student. His own students found him strict and uncompromising. Vilém Taaski, one of his students, described his encounters with Janáček as somewhat upsetting for someone unused to his personality, and noted that Janáčkov's characteristically staccato speech rhythms were reproduced in some of his operatic characters. In 1881, Janáčki gave his leading role with Brněnská Beseda, as a response to criticism, but a rapid decline Conversations the quality of its work led to its withdrawal in 1882.
His family life, settled and calm in his early years, became increasingly strained and difficult after the death of his daughter, Olga, in 1903. Years of effort in obscurity took their toll, and he almost ended his ambitions as a composer: "I was shot down" , he wrote later, "My own students gave me advice - how to compose, how to speak through an orchestra." Success in 1916 - when the Karelians Kovarovik finally decided to carry out Jenufa in Prague - brought its own problems. Janacek reluctantly accepted the changes imposed on his work. His success brought him into the Prague music scene and the attention of soprano Gabriela Horvátová, who guided him through Prague society. Janacek was fascinated by her. Upon returning to Brno, he did not seem to hide his new passion from Zdenka, who responded by attempting suicide. Janáček was furious with Zdenka and tried to instigate a divorce, but lost interest in Horvátová. Zdenka, wanting to avoid the public scandal of a formal divorce, convinced him to agree to an "unofficial" divorce. From then on, until Janacek's death, they lived a separate life in the same house.
In 1917 he began his lifelong, inspired and unrequited passion for Kamil Stosslav, who neither sought nor rejected his devotion. Janáček pleaded for the first name of the members in their correspondence. In 1927, she finally agreed and signed herself "TVA Kamila" (Your Kamila) in a letter that Zdenka had been found. This discovery caused a furious quarrel between Zdenka and Janacek, although their living mechanisms did not change - Janacek seems to have convinced her to stay. In 1928, the year of his death, Janáček confessed his intention to make his feelings for Stösslová public. Max Brod tried to dissuade him. Janáčkov's contemporaries and collaborators described him as distrustful and reserved, but capable of obsessive passion for those he loved. His overwhelming passion for Stösslová was sincere, but bordered on self-destructive. Their letters remain an important source for Janáček's artistic intentions and inspiration. His letter to his long-suffering wife is, on the contrary, secularly descriptive. Zdenka seems to have destroyed everything in Janacek. Only a few postcards survive.
Style
In 1874, Janáček became friends with Antonin Dvořák, and began composing in a relatively traditional Romantic style. After his opera Sharka(1887-1888), his style absorbed elements of Moravian and Slovak folk music.
His musical assimilation of the rhythm, pitch contour and inflections of normal Czech speech (Moravian dialect) helped create the very distinctive vocal melodies of his opera Jenufa(1904), whose 1916 success in Prague was to become a turning point in his career. IN Jenufe Janáček developed and applied the concept of "speech melodies" to build a unique musical and dramatic style completely independent of the "Wagnerian" dramatic mode. He studied the circumstances under which "speech melodies" changed, the psychology and temperament of speakers, and the coherence within speech, all of which helped to lend stark truth to the roles of his mature operas, and became one of the most significant markers of his style. Janáček took these stylistic principles much further in his vocal writing than Modest Mussorgsky, and thus suggests the late work of Béla Bartók. The stylistic basis for his subsequent works occurs in the period 1904-1918, but Janáček composed the bulk of his output - and his best known works - in the last decade of his life.
Much of Janáček's work exhibits great originality and individuality. It uses a greatly expanded representation of tonality, uses non-standard chord spacing and structure, and often, modality: "there is no music without a key." Atonality cancels a certain key, and thus tonal modulation.... Folk song knows no atonality." Janáček features accompaniment figures and patterns, with (according to Jim Samson) "The continuing movement of his music... is also achieved through unconventional means, often discourse; in short, 'unfinished' phrases containing constant repetitions of short motifs that gather momentum with accumulation." Janáček called these motifs "sčasovka" in his theoretical works. "Sčasovka" has no strict English equivalent, but John Tyrrell, a leading authority on Janáček's music, describes it as "a little flash of time, almost a kind of musical capsule, which Janáček often used in slow music as tiny fast motifs with surprisingly distinctive rhythms that "is supposed to pepper the musical flow." Janáčkova's use of these repeated motifs demonstrates a distant similarity to minimalist composers (Sir Charles Mackerras called Janáčkova "the first minimalist composer").
inspiration
Janáčkova's style is based on several sources.
folklore
Janáček was deeply influenced by folklore, and Moravian folk music in particular, but not universally, an idealized version of 19th century romantic folk music. He takes a realistic, descriptive and analytical approach to the material. Moravian folk songs, in comparison with their Bohemian counterparts, are much freer and more irregular in their metrical and rhythmic structure, and more varied in their melodic intervals. In his study of Moravian regimes, Janáček discovered that peasant musicians did not know the names of the regimes and had their own ways of referring to them. He considered their Moravian modulation, as he called it, a general characteristic of the folk music of that region.
Janáček partly composed original piano accompaniments to over 150 folk songs, respecting their original function and context, and also partly used folk inspiration in his own works, especially in his mature compositions. His work in this area was not stylistically imitative; instead, he developed a new and original musical aesthetic based on a deep study of the foundations of folk music. Through his systematic recording of folk songs as he heard them, Janáček developed an exceptional sensitivity to the melodies and rhythms of speech, from which he compiled a collection of distinctive segments he called "speech melodies". He used this "essence" of spoken language in his vocal and instrumental works. The roots of his style, marked in the lilts of human speech, emerge from the world of folk music.
Russia
Janachkov's deep and lifelong affection for Russia and Russian culture represents another important element of his musical inspiration. In 1888, he took part in the work of Prague Tchaikovsky's music, and met the senior composer. Janáček deeply admired Tchaikovsky, and especially appreciated his highly developed musical thought in connection with the use of Russian folk motifs. Janáčkovo's Russian inspiration is particularly noticeable in his subsequent chamber, symphonic and operatic output. He closely followed developments in Russian music from an early age, and in 1896, after his first visit to Russia, he founded Russian Circle in Brno. Janacek reading Russian authors in the original language. Their literature offered him a huge and reliable source of inspiration, although it did not blind him to the problems of Russian society. He was twenty-two years old when he wrote his first composition based on a Russian theme: melodrama, Death, install Lermontov's poem. In later works he often used literary models with sharply shaped areas. In 1910 Zhukovskaya The Tale of Tsar Berendey inspired him to write fairy tale for cello and piano. He wrote a rhapsody Taras Bulba(1918) on Gogol's short story, and five years later, in 1923, he completed his first string quartet, inspired by Tolstoy Kreutzer Sonata. Two of his later operas were based on Russian themes: Katya Kabanova compiled in 1921, Alexander Ostrovsky's plays, The Storm: and his latest work, From the dead house, which transformed Dostoevsky's vision of the world into a gripping ensemble drama.
Other composers
Janáček always deeply admired Antonin Dvořák, to whom he dedicated several of his works. He rearranged parts of Dvořák's Moravian duets for mixed choir with original piano accompaniment. In the early years of the 20th century, Janáček became increasingly interested in the music of other European composers. His opera Fate was a response to another important and famous work in modern Bohemia - Louise, by the French composer Gustav Charpentier. The influence of Giacomo Puccini is evident especially in Janáček's later works, for example in his opera Katya Kabanova. Although he closely observed developments in European music, his operas remained firmly associated with Czech and Slavic themes.
heritage
Janáček belongs to a wave of twentieth-century composers who sought greater realism and a greater connection to everyday life, combined with a more comprehensive use of musical resources. His opera, in particular, demonstrates the use of "speech"-derived melodic lines, folk and traditional materials, and complex modal musical argument. Janáček's work continues to be performed regularly around the world, and is generally considered popular among audiences. He also inspired later composers in his homeland, as well as music theorists, among them Jaroslav Volek, to place the development of modal alongside harmony's importance in music.
A comparable chamber work for an even more unusual set of instruments, the Capriccio for left-hand piano, flute, two trumpets, three trombones and tenor tuba, was written for pianist Otakar Hollmann, who lost the use of his right hand during the First World War. After its premiere in Prague on March 2, 1928, Capriccio received significant recognition in the musical world.
Other well-known plays by Janáček include Sinfonietta, V Glagolitic Massa(text written in Old Church Slavonic), and rhapsody Taras Bulba. These parts and the aforementioned five late operas were written in the last decade of Janáček's life.
Janacek created a school of composition in Brno. Among his prominent students were Jan Kunz, Vaclav Kapral, Vilem Petrzelka, Jaroslav Kvapil, Oswald Czlubna, Bretislav Bakala and Pavel Haas. Most of his students neither imitated nor developed Janáček's style, which left him no direct stylistic descendants. According to Milan Kundera, Janáček developed a personal, modern style in relative isolation from contemporary modernist movements, but was in close contact with developments in contemporary European music. His path to innovative "modernism" in the last years of his life was long and lonely, and he achieved true individualization as a composer around his 50s.
French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez, who interpreted Janáček's operas and orchestral works, called his music surprisingly modern and fresh: "Its repetitive pulse changes through changes in rhythm, tone and direction." He described his opera From the dead house as "primitive, in the best sense of the word, but also very strong, like Léger's paintings, where the rudimentary character allows a very energetic kind of expression."
Janáčková's life has been chronicled in several films. In 1974, Eva Marie Kankova made a short documentary Fotograf Muzika(photographer and music) about the Czech photographer Sudek and his attitude towards Janacek's work. In 1983, the Quay brothers produced the stop-motion animated film, Leoš Janáček: Intimate Tours, about the life and work of Janáček, and in 1986 the director of the Czech Jaromil Žires made Lev s Bilou hřívou(The Lion of the White Mane), which showed the loving inspiration behind Janáček's works. Finding Janáček is a Czech documentarian made in 2004 by Petr Kanka to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Janáček's birth. Animated cartoon version The cheating Vixen was made in 2003 by the BBC, with music performed by the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra of Berlin and conducted by Kent Nagano. Opening regrouping Sinfoniettas was used by progressive rock group Emerson, Lake & Palmer for the song "Knife's Edge" on their 1970 debut album.
operas
Leoš Janáček is considered one of the first opera composers to use prose for his libretto, not verse. He even wrote his own libretto for his last three operas. His librettos were translated into German by Max Brod.
orchestral
Early orchestral works influenced by the Romantic style, and especially the orchestral works of Dvorak. In later works created after 1900, Janáček found his own, original expression.
Vocal-choral
Janáček's choral works, known especially in the Czech Republic, are considered extremely demanding. He wrote several choruses to the words of the Czech poet Bezruch.
Chamber and instrumental
His string quartets form the basis of the 20th century classical repertoire. Much of his other notable chamber music is written for non-traditional ensembles.
piano
Janacek composed his main piano works in a relatively short period of twelve years, from 1901 to 1912. His early Theme of the scammer variazioni(subtitle Zdenka's variations) is the student's work consists of the styles of famous composers.
Selected works
- About dokonalé představě dvojzvuku(on the ideal image of the Accord dyad) (1885-1886)
- Bedřich Smetana o formách hudebních(Bedřich Smetana: On musical forms) (1886)
- O představě toniny(on the idea of Key) (1886-1887)
- About vědeckosti sciences about harmonii(On Scientism Harmony of Theories) (1887)
- About trojzvuku(On Triads) (1887-1888)
- Slovíčko o kontrapunktu(A Lay on Counterpoint) (1888)
- Novo be proud of v Hudební theory and (New Stream in Music Theory) (1894)
- O skladbě souzvukův jejich spojův(On the construction of chords and their progressions) (1896)
- Modern harmonica HUDBA(Modern Harmonic Music) (1907)
- Můj názor o sčasování (rytmu)(My opinion on "sčasování" (Rhythm)) (1907)
- Z praktické casti o sčasování (rytmu)(On "sčasování" From practice) (1908)
- Vaha realních motivů(Gravity of Real Motifs) (1910)
- O průběhu duševní práce skladatelské(On the progress of mental compositional work) (1916)
- Úplná science of harmonii(Harmony of Theory) (1920)
Mass media
Janacek in literature
Janacek is the central character of David Herter's First Republic trilogy including novels to the Overgrown Path , luminous depth And The One Who Disappeared .
sources
- Černušák, Gracian (ed.); Štědroň, Bohumír; Nováček, Zdenko (ed.) (1963). Československý Hudební Slovnik I. (A-L)(in Czech). Prague: Státní Hudební vydavatelství. link)
- Chisholly, Eric (1971). Operas by Leos Janacek. ISBN.
- Drlíková, Eva (2004). Leoš Janáček, Život Dilo v Datech obrazech / chronology of his life and work. Brno: Opus Musicum. ISBN. (in Czech) (in English)
- FeNoMeN Janacek včera today. COLLECTION g mezinárodní hudebněvědné with conference- (in Czech). Brno: Brno Conservatory. 2006. ISBN.
- Firkušny, Leos (2005). Janáčkův život(in Czech). Prague.
- Hollander, Hans (1963). Janacek. London. paragraph 119.
- Janaceka, Leos; editor Leos Faltus; Eva Drlikova; Svatava Přibáňová; Jiri Zahrádka (2007). Teoretické Dilo series I / Volume 2-1 ISBN. CS1 gardeners: Additional text: list of authors (link)
- Janaceka, Leos; editor Eva Drlíková; Feodora Strakova (2003). Dilo Literary Series I / Volume 1-1(in the Czech Republic). Brno: Editio Janacek. ISBN. CS1 gardeners: Additional text: list of authors (link)(Notes based on English summary)
- Janaceka, Leos; Zahrádka, Jiří (preface); Peters-Grafow, Sarah (trans.) (2006). Along zarostlém chodníčku (On the Overgrown Path). Urtext. Prague: Editio Bärenreiter. B. A. 9502. ISMN M-2601-0365-8
- Kundera, Milan (1996). Testaments of the Devotees. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN.
- Kundera, Milan (2004). Můj Janacek(in Czech). Brno: Atlantis. ISBN.
- Orth, Jiri (2005). Pozdni divoch. Láska in Život Leosha Janáčka against operách dopisech(in the Czech Republic). Prague: Mlada Fronta. ISBN.
- (ed.) Přibáňová, Svatava (2007). Thema con variazioni. Leosha Janacek, korespondence s manželkou Zdeňkou dcerou Olgou(in Czech). Prague: Editio Bärenreiter.
Known all over the world as a famous Czech composer, but only he himself considered himself, first of all, a Moravian. After all, Janacek was born in the very center of the Moravian region of Lašsko - in.
There are no blank spots in his biography; you can read about him on many websites dedicated to composers. But there are nuances in his life that are not written about in official biographies, but they help to understand Janacek as a composer and a person.
The building of the former school in Hukvaldy, where Leoš Janáček was born.
On June 3, 1854, in the small village of Hukvaldy, the future composer was born in a room at a simple rural school. He was the ninth child in the family, but not the last. His father Jiri Janacek was a school teacher and regent in the village church of St. Maximilian. The life of a school teacher was not covered with roses; there was enough trouble with both students and the household. The only consolation was bees and music. As a conductor of a church choir, Jiri Janacek could not fully express himself, since the choir of the local church was too small to perform any solemn mass with instrumental accompaniment. And then he looked for some other nearby temple. Most often it was the church in Rykhaltitsa, where the regent was his friend, with whom he was connected not only by his love of music, but also by his passion for beekeeping. To add shine to his performances, Jiri Janacek often brought with him his daughter Leonora, who played the viola, and his son, who had a beautiful treble. This little son was.
Leosh grew up in contact with music and nature. The family was poor, but still fruit from the school garden, honey from his father’s apiary and domestic geese, chickens, and ducks were always available. And after the solemn liturgy in the Rykhaltitsa church, an equally solemn dinner was organized for the musicians. Unfortunately, the friendship of the two regents unexpectedly ended, and with it the trips to Ryhaltitsa for solemn masses. The children were very worried, and in order not to be left at the Easter Mass without timpani (there were no timpani in the Hukvaldsky Church), they went to Rykhaltitsa at night to “borrow” kettledrums. Having safely carried the kettledrums to Hukvald, they encountered their father’s misunderstanding and were beaten with kettledrum sticks. This robber raid on the church in Rykhaltitsa, a night march with kettledrums near the cemetery, became Leosha Janacek We have the most romantic childhood memories, and our love for timpani remained for the rest of our lives. “In each of my compositions the timpani receive a special solo,” he wrote.
Starobrnensky Augustian monastery. The year 1865 was a turning point in the fate of Leoš Janáček. He was eleven years old, and his father, seeing his extraordinary musical talent, decided to send him to study at a vocational school. The choice was from two schools: the archbishop's choir school in Kromeriz, where Jiri Janáček was also regent and was on good terms with the archbishop, or the Augustinian monastery in Brno, where the director of the choir in the music school at the monastery was Pavel Krzhizkovsky. Once upon a time, Krzhizkovsky, who lost his father at an early age, was taken under the protection of Jiri Janacek, taught him music and helped him get on his feet. Krzyzkowski is considered the founder of choral music in Moravia. By the time Jiri Janacek was thinking about where to send his son to study, Krizhkovsky was already a famous composer. And my father made a choice in favor of Brno and Krzhizhkovsky.
The school at the Augustian monastery in Old Brno was founded in 1648 by Countess Sibila Polixena Montani and was created in the likeness of typical Italian conservatories. Let me remind you that conservatories initially had completely different functions than we are used to. It was a school for poor children or an orphanage in general, where children were given a varied education, including music.
There were few students at the school, no more than 13 people. They had to be of impeccable morals and received free education, food, housing and medical care. On holidays they were dressed in ceremonial red clothes embroidered with gold, and their usual uniform was light blue and blue, for which they were nicknamed “little doves” in Brno.
Only especially gifted children studied there, who already upon admission knew how to play several musical instruments. Children were accepted from 9 to 12 years old. They charged more than the norm for the education of children, but also only gifted ones. "Doves" were known throughout the city. Not a single concert, church choir or musical performance was complete without them. There was a training orchestra, and the choir was simply unique. They practiced Cherubini’s largest Coronation Mass for 5 days. The overture to Weber's opera Oberon and Mozart's quintet were played from sight.
The school provided very serious musical training. Vocal lessons, choir, playing musical instruments, and everyone had to be able to play all wind instruments. But at the same time, the school program included philosophy, logic, grammar, languages, mathematics and other subjects. Graduates of the school later became successful musicians in orchestras, opera houses, and many also became composers, music teachers and directors of musical groups.
The requirements at school were strict. Every day gets up at 5 am, prayer and classes, at 7 – mass, then breakfast and lessons at school, at 12 o’clock – lunch, a short walk and classes, from 6 to 7 pm – choir rehearsal, then again classes and prayer before bed .
In 1866, the so-called Caecilian reform, which revised the approach to church music, began to gain popularity in Western countries. Simply put, solemn instrumental masses with timpani were becoming a thing of the past, and Gregorian choirs were returning to Catholic churches. So at the school at the Augustinian monastery they stopped studying wind instruments, placing more and more emphasis on choral singing.
The monastery in Velehrad, where celebrations dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of the arrival of St. Cyril and Methodius in Moravia took place. Not only did he receive an excellent education and the basics of self-discipline at school, but he was also able to develop his own position in life, primarily due to his Moravian origin, a position of belonging to Slavic roots. He became a supporter of the Cyril and Methodius idea, a symbol of the revival of Moravia. For Moravia, where the cult of St. Wenceslas was never as strong as in the Czech Republic, they became symbols of patriotic, religious and cultural revival. “Doves” were supposed to be sung in Velehrad at the celebrations dedicated to the millennium of the arrival of the holy brothers in Moravia, and Janáček looked forward to the trip to Velehrad with such trepidation that he even asked his uncle to buy him a Slavic national costume.
After finishing school, following his father's desire to become a teacher, Janáček graduated from the Slavic Institute in Brno. And when Krzyzhkovsky, at the request of the archbishop, leaves for Olomouc to lead the cathedral choir, he leaves eighteen-year-old Leos as regent at the school of the Augustian monastery. The road to concert activity in Brno opened before Janáček.
At that time, due to the surge of patriotism in Moravia, various societies of workers and artisans began to be created in large numbers, where they studied the Czech language, the history of Moravia and always sang. So in 1873, the community of artisans, mainly weavers, “Svyatopolk” invited Janacek as a choirmaster. Of course, the Svyatopolk choir immediately rose to a higher performing level. Janáček regularly supplemented the choir with boys from the choir school. In addition to gaining experience as a choirmaster, at this time he wrote his first works for choir based on Moravian folk songs. But feeling a lack of theoretical knowledge, in 1874 Janáček decided to go to the Prague Organ School.
He had only one year of leave, which was given to him at the Slavic Institute. This year, Janacek wanted to complete two courses at once. He studied from morning to night; there was no time to earn extra money or give lessons, which is how students always earned money. Therefore, there was catastrophically no money either for food or for firewood to heat his little room, which he rented from the janitor, and there was no money to rent a piano. He played on the table using the drawn keys. But a year later, having passed the exams, he returned to the Slavic Institute in Brno as a real music teacher. Choirmaster activity began again at Svyatopolk and at the choir school, and new works for the choir appeared. After some time, Janacek was invited to lead the choir at another city society, Beseda. The society was richer, so Janacek became concerned about creating an orchestra, even taking the initiative to create a special school, but so far he had concluded an agreement with only a few musicians. Janáček begins to write instrumental music for his orchestra.
Feeling that he again lacked knowledge, Janacek again decided to leave his choirmaster activity and go to study. What he liked most at that time was Anton Rubenstein, and Janacek wrote him a letter. But the letter did not find an addressee and was returned unopened a few months later. And in 1879 he decides to go to the Leipzig Conservatory. But by this time love had entered his life. Her name was Zdenka Schulcova, the daughter of Emil Schultz, Janacek's boss at the Slavic Institute.
In Leipzig, Janáček wanted to complete three courses at once in a year, but in the first six months he became so disappointed in the teachers that he ran away from there in January. And he went to finish his studies in Vienna. But even there he did not find a common language with the teachers. In Vienna his work was simply not noticed. In despair, he left Vienna in June without even receiving his diploma. And he went to his uncle in Moravian Slovakia. Only Moravia gave him vitality and the desire to create.
Leos Janacek and Zdenka Šulcova After returning to Brno, Janáček began his regular duties as teacher and choirmaster. His wedding was supposed to take place at the same time. It must be said that although the father of his future wife was the director of the Slavic University, his mother was German, so her native language was German, they spoke German at home, Zdenka also studied in German. Moreover, Zdenka’s mother generally adhered to the opinion, accepted in all German circles of that time, that the Czech language was only suitable for maids. Well, you can imagine with what force the two worldviews collided here - the mother of Zdenka and Janacek, who could not stand everything German, because for the Slavs the Germans were enslavers.
In Brno, Janáček, as a matter of principle, did not attend German concerts and operas, and since the city transport was controlled by the Germans, he did not even use the tram. Zdenka's parents were against this marriage, but the girl was adamant, answering that “she would rather be unhappy with Janacek than happy with someone else.”
The wedding took place, and the newlyweds went on a trip to the Czech Republic and Moravia. And two years later Zdenka gave birth to a daughter, Olga. Janacek had a crisis at that time, he was expecting a son, and was upset about his daughter. Moreover, he decided to take his mother into their small apartment so that Zdenka would look after her. Zdenka was offended and went to her parents. Their breakup lasted for two years, but then Janacek decided to start all over again, began caring for his wife, seeing his child, and in the end the couple reconciled.
A few years later, in 1888, the couple had a long-awaited son, Vladimir, who also received a Russian name. Janacek's joy knew no bounds; Vladimir was a beautiful, cheerful child and showed promise of musical talent. But in October 1890, Olga fell ill with scarlet fever. Her body coped, but little Vladimir became infected, the disease became more complicated, meningitis began, and the child died at two and a half years old. At the same time, Zdenka’s dreams of family happiness collapsed. Janacek closed himself off and threw himself into work.
Leoš Janáček at the Moravian Year festival in Brno. By that time, he had already initiated the opening of an organ school in Brno, which was then based in the premises of the Slavic Institute, and when the first Czech National Theater opened in Brno, he began publishing the newspaper “Musical Pages”, which promoted Czech music and drama. Well, of course, he never stopped writing music. He also developed another hobby. Janáček always showed interest in Moravian folk songs, but after meeting the ethnographer Frantisek Bartosz, their joint ethnographic expeditions began in various regions of Moravia. The fact is that the Czech Republic has always been more influenced by German culture, and Czech folklore practically did not exist, but Moravia was able to preserve its national Slavic flavor.
Thanks to these expeditions, the Laš Dances were written, and all subsequent works by Janáček always bore a pronounced national Moravian flavor. Janáček founded the ethnographic union of Moravian musicians, and by 1995 prepared the performance of Moravian folk groups at an ethnographic exhibition in Prague.
In 1896, Leos Janacek decided to go to Russia, to Nizhny Novgorod for an art and industrial exhibition. This trip so strengthened him in the ideas of Pan-Slavism that he decided to found a “Russian Circle” in Brno, learn the Russian language, and later created many of his works based on Russian literature, for example, the opera “Katya Kabanova” based on the drama by A.N. Ostrovsky "The Thunderstorm".
Daughter of Leos Janacek Olga. Janacek also studied Russian with his daughter Olga. She did not have much musical talent, but she had an excellent memory, and her parents wanted her to become a Russian language teacher. Olga, as a result of tonsillitis suffered in childhood, had very poor health. The sore throat became a complication, and the girl developed rheumatism of the joints and heart disease. They took care of her, did not allow her to skate, swim, and covered her up all the time. She grew up to be a beautiful, elegant girl, and one day at a ball she met medical student Vorel. The girl became interested in him, but her parents did not approve of her choice. And to distract Olga, they decided to send her to St. Petersburg, where Janacek’s brother Frantisek lived. He was an engineer and moved to St. Petersburg because he was offered good conditions at a factory there. Olga had to not only take a break, but also practice her Russian language. The trip turned out to be fatal for the girl. She fell ill with typhus there. And although she was already on the road to recovery, and her parents were able to transport her to Moravia, her poor health was completely undermined, and on the threshold of her twenty-first spring, Olga died.
Janáček’s own health also left much to be desired, and he often spent time at his favorite resort, Luhačovice. In the summer of 1903, he met Kamilla Urvalkova, the young wife of a forester. Until the end of his life, he had platonic feelings for her and dedicated an opera and many works. And Zdenka continued to love him and always support him.
Chanterelle-Fast-ear in Khukvaldy By 1920, Janacek completed the arrangement of his own house in Hukvaldy. For health reasons, he needed peace, which the Hukvalds could provide. He had a small villa here with a garden, surrounded by mountains and the Khukvald forest. It was here that the idea to write an opera about a fox appeared. At that time, the newspaper published Rudolf Tesnoglidok’s story “The Little Fox.” At first it was, however, “Quick-footed”, but the typesetter at the printing house made a mistake, but the author liked it, he did not correct it, and so the little fox in the story began to be called Quick-eared. Janáček wrote a libretto and music based on this story. An opera appeared from the life of the inhabitants of the Hukvald forest. By the way, if you go to the Hukvaldy fortress, on the way you will come across a monument to the Hukvaldy fox, which was made famous by Janacek.
Of course, he could not live permanently in Khukvaldy; he came here to rest, continuing his teaching, composing and concert activities. In the summer of 1928, he went to Hukvaldy with Kamilla Urvalkova, her husband and child. He showed his guests the surrounding area, talked about the ethnographic features of the Moravian regions, and Camilla’s child got lost in the forest. Forgetting his age, Janacek ran through the forest, and then, tired and warm, sat down on a bench despite the fact that a strong wind was blowing. The boy returned safely after some time, but the maestro fell ill, but for the first days he tried to hide his cold from his guests. Only when he became very ill did Janáček invite a doctor, who diagnosed the onset of pneumonia. He was brought to Ostrava with a temperature of 40. Two days later, on August 12, 1928, Leos Janacek passed away.
All of Moravia mourned its “great Moravian” and true Moravian composer Leosha Janacek. And now in almost every city there are streets and squares named after him; in Brno, a music school, an Academy of Music, a theater, an International Music Competition and much more bear his name. And every year the International Classical Music Festival “Janáčkovy Hukvaldy” takes place in Hukvaldy.
Tour programs in Moravia, dates and prices can be found on the page
Every year the name of the Czech composer Leoš Janáček appears more and more often on opera and concert posters, and in this one can see one of the most important manifestations of the fair verdict of history. Janáček was over fifty when, huddled in the Moravian outback of Habsburg Austria-Hungary, he moved from hope to despair, once again turning the pages of his scores. Like an impossible happiness, he dreamed of hearing them in real, and not in imaginary, sound.
The composer was born on August 3, 1854, in a region of dense forests and ancient castles, in the small Moravian mountain village of Hukvaldy. He was the ninth of fourteen children of a high school teacher. His father, among other subjects, taught music, was a violinist, church organist, leader and conductor of a choral society. The mother also had extraordinary musical abilities and knowledge. She played the guitar, sang well, and after the death of her husband, she performed the organ part in the local church. The childhood of the future composer was poor, but healthy and free. He forever retained his spiritual closeness to nature, respect and love for the Moravian peasants, who were raised in him from an early age. Leosh lived under his parents’ roof only until he was 11 years old. His musical abilities and sonorous treble decided the question of where the child should be placed. His father took him to Brno to see Pavel Krizhkovsky, a Moravian composer and collector of folklore. Leos was accepted into the church choir of the Starobrno Augustinian Monastery. Boy choristers lived at the monastery at public expense, attended a comprehensive school and underwent musical disciplines under the guidance of strict monastic mentors. Krzhizhkovsky himself was involved in the composition with Leos.
Memories of life in the Starobrno Monastery are reflected in many of Janacek’s works (cantatas “Amarus” and “Eternal Gospel”; sextet “Youth”; piano cycles “In the Darkness”, “On an Overgrown Path”, etc.). The atmosphere of ancient Moravian culture, realized in those years, was embodied in one of the composer's masterpieces - the Glagolitic Mass (1926).
Here, in the center of Moravia, in the city of Brno, Janáček begins his career after graduating from a pedagogical educational institution: he becomes a teacher, continuing the traditions of his grandfather, father and mother. In 1873-1876, Janáček became the choirmaster of the choral society of artisans "Svjatopluk". Dreams of further musical education remain dreams for many years. Only in 1878 did he manage to break into the world of “big music”, to Leipzig and Vienna. Prior to this, in one year he completed a two-year course in organ playing at the Prague School of Organists. In his imagination, he saw himself in St. Petersburg in Anton Rubinstein's class. In reality, he comprehends the secrets of the “composer's kitchen” in German conservatories.
But still, in the main work of his life - creativity - he did not have a real great leader. Everything that he achieved was achieved not thanks to school and highly experienced advisers, but completely independently, through difficult quests, sometimes by trial and error.
Since the late 1870s, Janáček has led the Moravian Singing Society. In 1881 he founded the Organ School in Brno. For about forty years he continuously directed it, training here not only organists, but also musicians of a wider profile: conductors, conductors, composers. On the basis of the Janacek School, the Conservatory grew in 1919, which in 1947 was reorganized into the Janacek Academy of Arts.
Huge busyness could only hamper the creative process, but not kill the need to create music. Janáček was a born composer.
The earliest known works date from the late 1870s: the six-movement Suite for string orchestra, “Idyll” for the same composition; “Zdenkin Variations” for piano are obviously associated, as their name shows, with Zdenka Schulz, who soon became the composer’s wife. In these works, as in the choral “Autumn Song” based on the verses of Yaroslav Varkhlitsky, in “Dumka” for violin and piano, typical features of a romantic composer are noticeable, following the paths laid by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, but at the same time preserving the features of national identity.
For many years the composer toiled and struggled in provincial obscurity. The Prague professional community did not recognize him for a long time; only Dvořák appreciated and loved his younger colleague. At the same time, the late romantic art that had taken root in the capital was alien to the Moravian master, who relied on folk art and the intonations of lively sounding speech. Since 1886, the composer, together with the ethnographer F. Bartosh, spent every summer on folklore expeditions. He published many recordings of Moravian folk songs and created concert, choral and solo arrangements of them. The highest achievement was the symphonic “Lash Dances” (1889). At the same time, a famous collection of folk songs (over 2000) was published with a preface by Janáček “On the musical side of Moravian folk songs,” now considered a classic work in folklore. His operatic experiences were more difficult.
The plot of his first opera, “Sarka,” is rooted in folk legends about Czech warrior maidens who preserve the customs of matriarchy, inherited from Princess Libuše, the first ruler of the Czech Republic. Written in the tradition of romantic opera, with emotional uplift and an abundance of choral and ensemble episodes, “Sarka” is entirely based on the melodic basis of Czech folklore. Alas, the list of Janáček’s works, imprisoned in his workroom for decades, begins with “Šárka.”
Following this, Janáček wrote the ethnographic ballet Rákos Rákocsy (1890) and the opera The Beginning of a Romance (1891), in which folk songs and dances were extensively quoted. The ballet was even staged in Prague during the Ethnographic Exhibition in 1895. These works were a temporary stage in Janacek's work. The composer followed the path of creating great, truthful art. He was driven by the desire to contrast abstraction with vitality, antiquity with the present day, a fictitious legendary setting with the concreteness of folk life, and generalized hero-symbols with ordinary people with hot human blood.
This was achieved only in the third opera “Jenufa” (based on the drama by G. Preissova, 1894-1903). Jenufa, or Her Stepdaughter, is a social drama. It is written passionately, it passionately denounces evil. But Preissova did not avoid many naturalistic details in depicting everyday life, in revealing the spiritual world of the heroes. Janacek invades Preissova's work and achieves the creation of an expressive libretto with a clear dramatic structure.
The composer confidently followed the main idea: to prevent sentimentality and melodrama in music. For him, fluent in the secrets of melodic writing, it would have been easy to fill the music with “sweetness”, to create, as Dargomyzhsky liked to say, “melodies that are flattering to the ear.” This is exactly what he was avoiding.
From the pen of an unrecognized composer, who also violated the usual norms of “opera” and turned to a sharp style of writing, was born a work of enormous power of social exposure and at the same time of enormous power of artistic influence, a work that is innovative in the full sense of the word. That is why it made a negative impression on the complacently liberal management of the Prague Theater, which as a result rejected Jenufa. It took 13 years of struggle for the magnificent work, now playing in theaters all over the world, to finally reach the capital’s stage. In 1916, the opera was a resounding success in Prague, and in 1918 in Vienna, which opened the path to world fame for the unknown 64-year-old Moravian master.
During the period of creative catastrophe, Janáček suffered a severe blow of fate - the death of his daughter, a girl of rare beauty and rare spiritual virtues. Before this, Janacek lost his beloved son. The children were named Russian or, as Janacek said, “Pushkin names” - Olga and Vladimir. Only the irresistible will to life, to creativity, and participation in the struggle for the national liberation of the Czech Republic from the Habsburg eagle did not allow the talented musician to bow his head and give in to despair. Echoes of the events of these dark years can be heard in the piano cycle “On an Overgrown Path.”
At the beginning of the 20th century, Janacek clearly showed social-critical tendencies. The composer writes a piano sonata “From the Street” and marks it with the date October 1, 1905, when Austrian soldiers dispersed a youth demonstration in Brno, and then tragic choruses to the poems of the working poet Petr Bezruch - “Cantor Galfar”, “Marichka Magdonova”, “70 000" (1906). Particularly dramatic is the chorus “Marichka Magdonova” about a dying but not submitting girl, which always evoked a strong reaction from the audience. When the composer, after one performance of this work, was told: “This is a real socialist rally!” - he replied: “That’s exactly what I wanted.” The first drafts of the magnificent symphonic rhapsody “Taras Bulba” date back to the same time, completely completed by the composer at the height of the First World War, when the government of Austria-Hungary drove Czech soldiers to fight against the Russians.
The last decade of the composer’s life and work (1918-1928) can be called lyrical-philosophical; he created the most lyrical of his operas “Katya Kabanova” (based on “The Thunderstorm” by Ostrovsky, 1921), a poetic philosophical fairy tale for adults - “The Adventures of a Trickster Fox "(based on the novella by R. Tesnog-Lidek, 1924), as well as the operas "The Makropoulos Remedy" (based on the play of the same name by K. Capek, 1925) and "From the House of the Dead" (based on "Notes from the House of the Dead" by F. Dostoevsky, 1928).
In Katya Kabanova, the dark kingdom of Kabanikha and the Wild remained unbroken, although many everyday details were not included in the opera. Preserving the ominous background of the kingdom of savage cruelty and darkness, the composer wove a captivating image of Katerina on it. He entrusted the main melodic pattern to the flute with its pure, pastoral timbre. Katerina's big monologue and two scenes with Boris can be considered among the best pages of opera lyrics of our century.
It is interesting that Janáčka’s two completed and two unfinished operas are directly related to Russian literature. The first two are “Katya Kabanova” (based on “The Thunderstorm” by Ostrovsky) and “From the House of the Dead” (based on Dostoevsky); the second two are “Anna Karenina” and “The Living Corpse”. There is nothing surprising in Leos Janacek's appeal to Russian literature. This is one of the expressions of his love for Russia, for Russian culture, for the Russian language, which he studied. Leos Janacek traveled to Russia twice, listened with delight to the music of Russian speech, and enjoyed the ringing streams of Russian choral singing. The music of Glinka, Dargomyzhsky, the Kuchkists, and Tchaikovsky constantly fed the composer’s creative imagination.
In the same fruitful decade, the magnificent Glagolitic Mass, two original vocal cycles (Diary of a Disappeared and Jokes), the wonderful chorus “The Mad Tramp” (Art. R. Tagore) and the Sinfonietta for brass band appeared. The symfonietta, lasting about 25 minutes, has become the most popular of Janáček's works in the repertoire of most orchestras around the world.
Janáček spent the last ten years of his life in Prague, where he moved in 1918, taking the place of professor at the conservatory. Until the end of his days, and he died on August 12, 1928, Janacek did not let go of the pencil, remaining a person who, in the words of B.V. Asafiev, “until his death I managed to be among the young.”
Death overtook Janacek unexpectedly: while on vacation in the summer in Hukvaldy, he caught a cold and died of pneumonia. He was buried in Brno. The Cathedral of the Starobrnensky Monastery, where he studied and sang in the choir as a boy, was filled with crowds of excited people. It seemed incredible that someone over whom years and the ailments of old age seemed to have no power had passed away. Contemporaries did not fully understand that Janacek was one of the founders of musical thinking and musical psychology of the 20th century. His speech with a strong local accent seemed too harsh for aesthetes; the original creations, philosophical views and theoretical thinking of a true innovator were perceived as a curiosity. During his lifetime, he gained a reputation as a dropout, a primitive, and a local folklorist. Only the new experience of modern man towards the end of the century opened our eyes to the personality of this brilliant artist, and a new explosion of interest in his work began. Now the straightforwardness of his view of the world does not need to be softened, the sharpness of the sound of his chords does not require polishing. Modern man sees Janacek as his comrade-in-arms, a herald of the universal principles of progress, humanism, and careful respect for the laws of nature.
JANACEK Leos
(3 VII 1854, Hukvaldy, Moravia - 12 VIII 1928, Moravska Ostrava, now Ostrava)
L. Janacek ranks in the history of Czech music of the 20th century. the same place of honor as in the 19th century. - his compatriots B. Smetana and A. Dvorak. It was these major national composers, creators of Czech classics, who brought the art of this most musical people to the world stage. Czech musicologist J. Šeda sketched the following portrait of Janáček, as he was preserved in the memory of his compatriots: ... "Hot-tempered, quick-tempered, principled, harsh, absent-minded, with unexpected changes of mood. He was short in stature, stocky, with an expressive head, with thick hair , lying on his head in disorderly strands, with frowning eyebrows and sparkling eyes. No attempts at grace, nothing external. He was a stubborn man full of life and impulse. Such is his music: full-blooded, laconic, changeable, like life itself, healthy, sensual, hot , captivating."
Janáček belonged to a generation that lived in an oppressed country (for a long time dependent on the Austrian Empire) in a reactionary era - shortly after the suppression of the national liberation revolution of 1848. Is this what is connected with his constant deep sympathy for the oppressed and suffering, his passionate, irrepressible rebellion ? The composer was born in a region of dense forests and ancient castles, in the small mountain village of Hukvaldy. He was the ninth of 14 children of a high school teacher. His father, among other subjects, taught music, was a violinist, church organist, and leader and conductor of a choral society. The mother also had extraordinary musical abilities and knowledge. She played the guitar, sang well, and after the death of her husband she performed the Organ part in the local church. The childhood of the future composer was poor, but healthy and free. He forever retained his spiritual closeness to nature, respect and love for the Moravian peasants, who were raised in him from an early age.
Leosh lived under his parents’ roof only until he was 11 years old. His musical abilities and sonorous treble decided the question of where the child should be placed. His father took him to Brno to see Pavel Krizhkovek, a Moravian composer and collector of folklore. Leos was accepted into the church choir of the Starobrno Augustinian Monastery. Boy choristers lived at the monastery at public expense, attended a comprehensive school and underwent musical disciplines under the guidance of strict monastic mentors. Krzhizhkovsky himself was involved in the composition with Leos. Memories of life in the Starobrno Monastery are reflected in many of Janacek’s works (cantatas “Amarus” and “Eternal Gospel”; sextet “Youth”; piano cycles “In the Darkness, Along an Overgrown Path”, etc.). The atmosphere of high and ancient Moravian culture, realized in those years, was embodied in one of the peaks of the composer’s work - the Glagolitic Mass (1926). Subsequently, Janáček completed a course at the Prague Organ School, improved himself at the Leipzig and Vienna Conservatories, but despite all the deep professional foundation, in the main work of his life - creativity - he did not have a real great leader. Everything that he achieved was achieved not thanks to school and highly experienced advisers, but completely independently, through difficult quests, sometimes by trial and error. From his first steps in his independent career, Janáček is not just a musician, but also a teacher, folklorist, conductor, music critic, theorist, organizer of philharmonic concerts and the Organ School in Brno, a music newspaper and a Russian language study group. For many years the composer toiled and struggled in provincial obscurity. The Prague professional community did not recognize him for a long time; only Dvořák appreciated and loved his younger colleague. At the same time, the late romantic art that had taken root in the capital was alien to the Moravian master, who relied on folk art and the intonations of lively sounding speech. Since 1886, the composer, together with the ethnographer F. Bartosh, spent every summer on folklore expeditions. He published many recordings of Moravian folk songs and created concert, choral and solo arrangements of them. The highest achievement here was the symphonic “Lash Dances” (1889). At the same time, a famous collection of folk songs (over 2000) was published with a preface by Janáček “On the musical side of Moravian folk songs,” now considered a classic work in folklore.
In the field of opera, Janáček's development was longer and more difficult. After one single attempt at composing a late-romantic opera based on a plot from the Czech epic ("Sarka" - 1887), he decided to write an ethnographic ballet "Rakos Rakoci" (1890) and an opera ("The Beginning of a Romance" - 1891), in which folk songs and dancing. The ballet was even staged in Prague during the Ethnographic Exhibition of 1895. The ethnographicism of these works was a temporary stage in Janáček’s work. The composer followed the path of creating great, truthful art. He was driven by the desire to contrast abstraction with vitality, antiquity with the present day, a fictitious legendary setting with the concreteness of folk life, and generalized hero-symbols with ordinary people with hot human blood. This was achieved only in the third opera, “Her Stepdaughter” (“Jenufa” based on the drama by G. Preissova, 1894-1903). There are no longer direct quotes in this opera, although it is all a cluster of stylistic features and characteristics, rhythms and intonations of Moravian songs, and folk speech. The opera was rejected by the Prague National Theater, and it took 13 years of struggle for the magnificent work, now performed in theaters all over the world, to finally penetrate the capital's stage. In 1916, the opera was a resounding success in Prague, and in 1918 in Vienna, which opened the path to world fame for the unknown 64-year-old Moravian master. By the time Her Stepdaughter is completed, Janáček has entered a period of full creative maturity. At the beginning of the 20th century. Janáček clearly exhibits socially critical tendencies. He is strongly influenced by Russian literature - Gogol, Tolstoy, Ostrovsky. He writes the piano sonata “From the Street” and marks it with the date October 1, 1905, when Austrian soldiers dispersed a youth demonstration in Brno, and then the tragic choirs at the station. working poet Pyotr Bezruch "Cantor Galfar, Marichka Magdonova, 70000" (1906). Particularly dramatic is the chorus “Marichka Magdonova” about a dying but not submitting girl, which always evoked a violent reaction from the audience. When the composer, after one of the performances of this work, was told: “This is a real socialist rally!” - he replied: “That’s exactly what I wanted.”
The first drafts of the symphonic rhapsody “Taras Bulba” date back to the same time, completely completed by the composer at the height of the First World War, when the government of Austria-Hungary drove Czech soldiers to fight against the Russians. It is significant that in his domestic literature Janáček finds material for social criticism (from the choirs at St. P. Bezruch to the satirical opera “The Adventures of Pan Broucek” based on the stories of S. Cech), and in his longing for the heroic image he turns to Gogol.
The last decade of the composer's life and work (1918-28) is clearly limited by the historical milestone of 1918 (the end of the war, the end of the three-hundred-year Austrian yoke) and at the same time by the turn in Janáček's personal destiny, the beginning of his world fame. During this period of his work, which can be called lyrical-philosophical, the most lyrical of his operas, “Katya Kabanova” (based on “The Thunderstorm” by Ostrovsky, 1919-21), was created. a poetic philosophical fairy tale for adults - "The Adventures of a Trickster Fox" (based on the novella by R. Tesnoglidek, 1921-23), as well as the operas "The Makropoulos Remedy" (based on the play of the same name by K. Capek, 1925) and "From the House of the Dead" (based on " Notes from the House of the Dead" by F. Dostoevsky, 1927-28). In the same incredibly fruitful decade, the magnificent Glagolitic Mass, 2 original vocal cycles (Diary of a Disappeared Man and Jokes), the wonderful chorus “The Mad Tramp” (Art. R. Tagore) and the widely popular Sinfonietta for brass band appeared. In addition, there are numerous choral and chamber instrumental works, including 2 quartets. As B. Asafiev once said about these works, Janáček seemed to become younger with each of them.
Death overtook Janacek unexpectedly: while on vacation in the summer in Hukvaldy, he caught a cold and died of pneumonia. He was buried in Brno. The Cathedral of the Starobrnensky Monastery, where he studied and sang in the choir as a boy, was filled with crowds of excited people. It seemed incredible that someone over whom years and the ailments of old age seemed to have no power had passed away.
Contemporaries did not fully understand that Janacek was one of the founders of musical thinking and musical psychology of the 20th century. His speech with a strong local accent seemed too daring for aesthetes; the original creations, philosophical views and theoretical thinking of a true innovator were perceived as a curiosity. During his lifetime, he gained a reputation as a dropout, a primitive, and a local folklorist. Only the new experience of modern man towards the end of the century opened our eyes to the personality of this brilliant artist, and a new explosion of interest in his work began. Now the straightforwardness of his view of the world does not need to be softened, the sharpness of the sound of his chords does not require polishing. Modern man sees Janacek as his comrade-in-arms, a herald of the universal principles of progress, humanism, and careful respect for the laws of nature.
Creative portraits of composers. - M.: Music. 1990 .
See what "JANACEK Leos" is in other dictionaries:
Leoš Janáček, bas-relief Leoš Janáček (Czech Leoš Janáček, June 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, at that time Austria - August 12, 1928, Ostrava, Czechoslovakia) - Czech composer, musicologist, ethnographer and teacher. Leos Janacek with his wife, 1881 ... Wikipedia
Leoš Janáček, bas-relief Leoš Janáček (Czech. Leoš Janáček, June 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, at that time Austria ... Wikipedia
Janacek, Leos- Leos Janacek. Janacek Leos (1854 1928), Czech composer, musical folklorist, conductor. One of the founders of the national school of composition. Operas, including “Her Stepdaughter” (1903), “Katya Kabanova” (1921; based on “The Thunderstorm” by A.N.... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
- (Janaček) (1854 1928), Czech composer, folklorist, conductor. One of the founders of the national school of composers, creator of Czech opera drama. Operas, including “Her Stepdaughter” (1903), “Katya Kabanova” (based on “The Thunderstorm” by A. N. Ostrovsky ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Janáček Leos (Leo Eugen) (3.7.1854, Hukvaldy, Moravia, ‒ 12.8.1928, Ostrava), Czech composer, folklorist, choirmaster, conductor, teacher, music critic. Member of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts (1912). Studied in 1865‒72 with P.… … Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Janáček, Leoš Janáček, bas-relief Leoš Janáček (Czech Leoš Janáček, June 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, at that time Austria - August 12, 1928, Ostrava ... Wikipedia
- (1854 1928) Czech composer, folklorist and conductor. Operas, including Her Stepdaughter (1903), Katya Kabanova (based on A. N. Ostrovsky’s Thunderstorm, 1921), The Adventures of a Trickster Fox (1923), vocal symphonic works, works for orchestra, ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary