Janácek, Leoš

Leos Janáèek was born in Hukvaldy in Moravia in 1854. As a boy he became a chorister at the Augustinian ‘Queen’s’ Monastery in Brno. After his education in Brno (including running the choir at the monastery) he went on to study at the Prague, Leipzig, and Vienna conservatories. In 1881 he founded a college of organists at Brno, which he directed until 1920, the year he and Zdenka Schulzová were married. In Brno he established a strong foundation for musical education, with violin and singing classes, an orchestra and later piano classes. When in 1884 the Provisional Czech Theatre opened in Brno, Janáèek founded Hudební listy, a review-based journal. As a result of interpersonal problems he not only resigned from the Gymnasium where he taught but also separated from his wife for a couple of years, after the birth of their first child, Olga in 1882. Their second child, a son, Vladimír was only two when he died of meningitis in 1890.

It is after this time that Janáèek composed his first opera, Šárka. However, despite the beauty of the score itself (it is heavily reminiscent of Dvoøák and Smetana) Janáèek had problems obtaining rights for the libretto (something he tried to do only after composing the opera). The opera remained unperformed until his 70th birthday.

After the failure staging his first opera, Janáèek threw himself into a comprehensive study of Moravian music. It is not surprising then that both of his next completed operas are Moravian ones. Both Poèátek Románu (The Beginning of a Romance) and Jenùfa are taken from works by Gabriela Preissová. Where Poèátek Románu is folkdances and self-contained songs, Jenùfa was a full-length and full-blown operatic achievement. It is not surprising that this has become one of the most enduring of Janáèek’s works. The composition of Jenùfa was protracted, and the effects of Janáèek’s maturing style can be seen in the stylistic differences between the first act and the last two. Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades (which Janáèek reviewed for Hudební listy), his increasing awareness of the power of the imitation of speech and arguably the death of his daughter all combined to form this powerful work. Janáèek completed the score of the opera and played the completed score to Oluska four days before her death on 26th February 1903. Janacek is known in particular for many other operas and his string quartets.