Leoš Janáček

“The piano resounded throughout the morning, albeit in an unusual manner. Janáček hammered away as loudly as possible, mostly with the pedal constantly raised, repeatedly playing the same motif of a few notes on the piano. (...) His verse while playing conveyed just how excited and enthralled he was by the motif’s emotional power.” The remarkable thing about this contemporary reminiscing on the working methods of Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) is not only the emphasis on the concise short motifs that are so characteristic of the composer’s work – it also paints a picture of a brilliant dilettante, and indeed such traits are not absent from the great composer’s persona.

It was relatively late in life that Leoš Janáček found his voice as a composer. He took the decisive step with the opera Jenůfa, which he worked on intermittently for almost ten years, from 1894 to 1903. However, the most productive phase of his career did not begin until 1917, when Janáček was already over 60 years old. In the years that followed until his death, he composed most of the works that we associate with his name today. In addition to his operas, these include Die Sinfonietta (1926), the Glagolitic Mass (1926/27) and String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2, also known as the Kreutzer Sonata and Intimate Letters.

Leoš Janáček was born on 3 July 1854 into a family of teachers and musicians living in poverty in a remote Moravian village. At the age of eleven, his parents sent him to Brno, where he received a secondary education while also taking music lessons. After studying in Prague, where he met Antonín Dvořák, and Leipzig, Janáček returned to Brno. There, in 1881, he founded an organ school, serving as director until 1919 at the site that would become the city’s conservatory.

Inspired by his friend František Bartoš, Janáček began to study the folk music of his homeland as early as 1885. On regular excursions, often by foot as many villages were not reachable by other means, Janáček and Bartoš collected an impressive number of songs, which were published in various forms, from scholarly editions to practical editions. His engagement with Moravian folk music acted as a catalyst for Janáček’s work, and his compositions – which had often seemed derivative – now took on increasingly individual and original characteristics.

With the successful premiere of Jenůfa in Brno on 21 January 1904, Janáček became a respected figure within Brno’s musical life, where he also conducted several choirs and orchestras. Despite this local success, however, his name remained virtually unknown outside Moravia. This only changed with the sensational revival of Jenůfa in Prague in 1916. Performances in Vienna, Cologne, Berlin, and New York followed in quick succession, bringing Janáček international recognition. Janáček was now able to devote himself exclusively to composing and, in the remaining years of his mature mastery, created four operas, orchestral works, and chamber music, among other works, in his own distinctive, compellingly expressive style. Leoš Janáček died on 12 August 1928.