Composer, teacher, conductor, pianist, writer and folklorist Leo\u0161 Jan\u00e1\u010dek (1854-1928) was one of the 20th century\u2019s most remarkable creators of music. Even though he belongs more to the generation of Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k in terms of his date of birth, his compositions lie among the most progressive works of music created during the last century. At the age of almost seventy, Jan\u00e1\u010dek rightfully stood shoulder to shoulder with composers one or even two generations younger, such as Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg, Alban Berg and Igor Stravinsky. Even though he became one of the most popular composers towards the end of his life, Jan\u00e1\u010dek maintained his connection with Brno. He had a close relationship with this city, not only because he spent the majority of his existence here, but also because he contributed to the significant development of Brno cultural life thanks to his tireless organizational, conducting and pedagogical activities, and thus influenced it for many years beyond his own lifetime. If we add the fact that the majority of the composer\u00b4s works had their premiere here in Brno, it is obvious how close the symbiosis was between the composer and his town.<\/p>\n
Leo\u0161 Jan\u00e1\u010dek came to Brno from his native Hukvaldy in 1865 as an eleven-year-old boy. His father sent him to the foundation of the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas in Old Brno. At that time, enlightened abbot Cyril Napp was the head of the abbey and personalities such as the composer Pavel K\u0159\u00ed\u017ekovsk\u00fd, the founder of genetics Georg Mendel and the philosopher, poet and journalist Franti\u0161ek Matou\u0161 Kl\u00e1cel were active there. Musically gifted boys who were accepted to the foundation were called \u201cblues\u201d according to the light blue uniform they wore. They received an excellent musical education at the abbey so that they could take part in its productions and concerts. Later, Jan\u00e1\u010dek continued his studies at a German secondary school which focused on humanities and sciences, and then at the Brno teaching institute. After passing the school-leaving exam in 1874, he remained at the institute as an assistant teacher. Aside from this, he was also engaged in activities as a choirmaster and conductor at the Svatopluk Artisan\u2019s Association (1873-76) and at the Beseda brn\u011bnsk\u00e1 Philharmonic Society (1876-88). During his era, Beseda brn\u011bnsk\u00e1 evolved into a large cantata choir with which Jan\u00e1\u010dek could perform works such as Mozart\u00b4s Requiem, Beethoven\u00b4s Missa Solemnis and Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u00b4s Stabat Mater. At that time, the young Jan\u00e1\u010dek had already started composing and he began to drift away from the career path of a teacher. He strove to deepen his musical education further. In 1874 he was accepted as a student at the Prague Organ School. In 1879-80 he studied briefly at the Leipzig and Vienna conservatories but found that, as he said himself, \u201cthere was nothing else to learn\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Not long after his return from Leipzig, Jan\u00e1\u010dek got married to Zdena Schulzov\u00e1, the daughter of the director of the teaching institute. The marriage wasn\u00b4t a very happy one, with the first serious crisis arriving not long after the wedding and remaining unsettled even after the birth of their daughter Olga. At that time, Jan\u00e1\u010dek was already very busy with work. He added duties at the Association for a Czech National Theatre in Brno, the Russian Circle and the Club of the Friends of Art to his many activities. He founded and published the first musical periodical in Moravia, Hudebn\u00ed listy (The Music Pages), and contributed to the Lidov\u00e9 noviny newspaper with reviews and columns. From 1888 he was intensively involved in the study of folk songs and dances, which he often collected and recorded directly in the field. He wrote several dedicated theoretical works and published the collection Bouquet of Moravian National Songs in collaboration with Franti\u0161ek Barto\u0161. In 1890, Jan\u00e1\u010dek and his wife were faced with tragedy in the form of the death of their two-year-old son Vladim\u00edr. At the beginning of the 1890s, Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u00b4s work was devoted to Moravian folklore. Many of his adaptations of folk songs and dances, the stylized orchestral Wallachian Dances, the \u201cscene from Moravian Slovakia\u201d R\u00e1kos R\u00e1koczy and the one-act opera The Beginning of a Romance were created at that time. Apart from his examination of folk songs, Jan\u00e1\u010dek also started to be interested in psychology and its expressions via the spoken word, which he considered to be some kind of \u201cwindows into the souls\u201d of people. The melody of speech, or in other words the melodic elements of speech, constituted (according to Jan\u00e1\u010dek) the expression of the character as well as the immediate frame of mind of a person. He was convinced that human speech could be recorded objectively using notation. Jan\u00e1\u010dek was devoted to the recording and collection of such melodies from 1897 onwards for more or less the rest of his life. However, he didn\u00b4t only stick to the melody of human speech: the more than three thousand recordings he made include the barking of a dog, the whine of a mosquito, the creaking of parquetry and the buzzing of a bee.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n Jan\u00e1\u010dek began a new approach to composition with the opera Jen\u016ffa, which was based on a drama set in a Moravian village by Gabriela Preissov\u00e1. In this opera, based as it was on prose, Jan\u00e1\u010dek arrived at a distinctive style of musical expression. He gradually leaves the traditional opera schema behind, with its closed numbers and arias. In their place, characteristic rhythmic forms appear in the orchestra such as rhythmic ostinato and modal tone forms, and the musical diction of the vocal parts of the individual characters are completely new, being based on his experience from the study of human speech. Jan\u00e1\u010dek finished the opera in 1903, after almost ten years of effort. The composer\u2019s work on Jen\u016ffa was accompanied by the worsening health of his daughter Olga and by his fear for her life. When he finished the opera, he received the hardest blow \u2013 his daughter died at the age of twenty-one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After the Prague National Theatre refused to perform Jen\u016ffa, its successful premiere took place at the Brno National Theatre on 21st January 1904. Up until then, Jan\u00e1\u010dek had been perceived by society as a director and teacher, and only marginally as a composer, as the results of his creative activities basically could only be seen by the public in Brno. He very much desired to be popular as an artist in Prague, and to be in contact with the Prague music scene. However, he had to wait for twelve more years for both of these things to happen. After the Brno premiere of Jen\u016ffa, Jan\u00e1\u010dek became a pensioner in order to be able to fully devote himself to his organ school and to composition. This period also marked the beginning of his regular visits to a \u201cSlavonic\u201d spa in Luha\u010dovice. During one of his spa stays, Jan\u00e1\u010dek became acquainted with Kamila Urv\u00e1lkov\u00e1, whose life story became the inspiration for Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u00b4s fourth opera, Destiny. However, this new work, which was supposed to be produced by the new City Theatre at Kr\u00e1lovsk\u00e9 Vinohrady, was never performed during the composer\u00b4s lifetime.<\/p>\n Beyond the borders of Brno, Jan\u00e1\u010dek was represented mainly by choirs at that time; the excellent Moravian Teacher\u2019s Choir with choirmaster Ferdinand Vach, and Pilsen\u2019s Smetana. For those ensembles he composed his Bezru\u010d choirs Kantor Halfar, Mary\u010dka Magd\u00f3nova and Seventy Thousand. In the period between the Brno and Prague premieres of Jen\u016ffa, further parts of the lyrical piano cycle On an Overgrown Path were created, along with the cycle In the Mists, the orchestral balled The Fiddler\u00b4s Child, the cantata The Eternal Gospel and the first version of the symphonic rhapsody Taras Bulba, as well as some other works. It was a period when the composer started to believe that Jen\u016ffa would never be performed in Prague, and began losing faith in himself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n \n<\/div>\n The last ten years of Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u00b4s life were the most prolific period as far as composition is concerned. The extraordinary dynamics of his creations and the vital energy of his \u201cgreat old age\u201d were inspired by, among other things, his friendship with his girlfriend and muse Kamila St\u00f6sslov\u00e1. Many of his compositions were directly inspired by her, such as The Diary of One Who Disappeared, the opera K\u00e1\u0165a Kabanov\u00e1 and the string quartet Intimate Letters. During this period he oversaw the transformation of Brno Organ School into Brno Conservatory, he was appointed a Professor of Prague Conservatory\u2019s Master School of Composition and elected the chairman of the Club of Moravian Composers. In 1925 he was awarded the first honorary doctorate to be presented by Masaryk University. In 1927 he was appointed a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and in the same year King Albert of Belgium made him a Knight of the Order of Leopold (after being impressed by the huge success of Jen\u016ffa in Antwerp). All of the former obstacles and barriers which had prevented Jan\u00e1\u010dek from undertaking intensive composition work finally fell, and the success of his pieces both at home and abroad stimulated the creation of more and more compositions. In the 1920s his chamber compositions Youth, Concertino and Capriccio, two string quartets, the orchestral Ballad of Blan\u00edk, his Sinfonietta and his Glagolitic Mass all appeared. Within short intervals he composed his most important musical and dramatic works: K\u00e1\u0165a Kabanov\u00e1, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropulos Affair and From the House of the Dead. The older Jan\u00e1\u010dek was, the younger and more expressive his music became. Sadly, the composer\u2019s fast-paced life at the peak of his creative powers was cut short by his sudden death. At the end of July 1928, Jan\u00e1\u010dek left for his native Hukvaldy, where Kamila and her son came to see him. He took a copy of the opera score of From the House of the Dead to make corrections and additions. He didn\u00b4t manage to complete the work, however. He was taken to a sanatorium in Ostrava with a serious cold, and succumbed there to severe pneumonia on 12th August. He is buried at Brno\u2019s Central Cemetery.<\/p>\n Author: Ji\u0159\u00ed Zahr\u00e1dka<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”4108″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https:\/\/www.leosjanacek.eu\/en\/”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [vc_row gap=”35″][vc_column][vc_column_text] Composer, teacher, conductor, pianist, writer and folklorist Leo\u0161 Jan\u00e1\u010dek (1854-1928) was one of the 20th century\u2019s most remarkable creators of music. Even though he belongs more to the generation of Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k in terms of his date of birth, his compositions lie among the most progressive works of music created during the last…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/2023.janacek-brno.cz\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/2-200x133.jpg.webp "\\"2\\"")