Leoš Janáček
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Leoš Janáček ([ˈlɛɔʃ ˈjanaːtʃɛk] ; July 3, 1854 in Hukvaldy, Moravia – August 12, 1928 in Ostrava) was a Czech composer. He is particularly remembered for his orchestral piece Sinfonietta and his operas, and is generally recognised as one of his country's foremost composers.
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[edit] Life and work
Janáček, the son of a schoolmaster, sang as a boy in the choir of the Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno. He later went to Prague to study music and made a living as a music teacher. He also conducted various amateur choirs. In 1881 he moved back to Brno, and founded the Organ School there, which was later to become the Brno Conservatory.
As a young man 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). When Jenůfa was given in Prague in 1916 it was a great success, and brought Janáček real acclaim for the first time. He was 62 at the time. A year later he met Kamila Stösslová, a young married woman who was a profound inspiration to him for the remaining years of his life.
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 along side 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: "Kreutzer Sonata", after Beethoven's famous sonata for violin and piano, and Toltsoy's novella of adultery and revenge; and the Quartet No. 2 "Intimate Letters".
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] Janáček's operas
- Šárka (1887)
- Počátek Románu, "The Beginning of a Romance" (1894)
- Jenůfa, Její pastorkyňa, "Jenůfa, Her Stepdaughter" (1904)
- Osud, "Fate" (1904)
- Výlety páně Broučkovy, "The Excursions of Mr. Broucek" (1920)
- Káťa Kabanová (1921)
- Příhody lišky Bystroušky, "The Cunning Little Vixen" (1924)
- Věc Makropulos, "The Makropoulos Affair" (1926)
- Z mrtvého domu, "From the House of the Dead" (1930)
[edit] Janáček's music in film
A film that draws extensively from Janáček's (mostly non-vocal) music is The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988, after a novel by Milan Kundera), which quotes, amongst other pieces:
- The Madonna of Frýdek, from the piano cycle On an Overgrown Path (1st series) is more or less Tereza's (Juliette Binoche) theme music: heard the first time she appears on the screen, and after recurring several times also accompanying the final scene of the film.
- Good Night from the same piano cycle is used to accompany the dog's dying and interment.
- 2nd string quartet ("Intimate Letters"), especially the final movement, which generally accompanies scenes of insecurity or imminent danger.
- violin sonata
- Pohádka (Fairy Tale) for cello and piano
- The Glagolitic Mass was used in its entirety in Kenneth Anger's film, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. The film was shot to sync up with the music, from beginning to end.
More on Janáček's music in film: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0418443/
[edit] In popular culture
- Janáček's music has also had an influence on other genres outside classical music: the progressive rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer recorded a song based on the opening theme from Sinfonietta. Entitled "Knife-Edge," the song (for which Janáček is co-credited as composer) appeared on their 1970 debut LP Emerson Lake & Palmer.[1]
[edit] Media
- Naše píseň; (Our Song) (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- Problems playing the files? See media help.
[edit] See also
- Category:Compositions by Leoš Janáček
- In Search of Janacek, award-winning documentary TV film
[edit] External links
- A detailed site on Leoš Janáček created by Gavin Plumley
- IMSLP - International Music Score Library Project's Janáček page.
- Leoš Janáček on Find-A-Grave
[edit] Sources
- Tyrrell, John (2006/7). 'Janáček: Years of a Life', London - A Two Volume biography of the composer by the leading authority - the second volume is released in 2007
- 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.
