Leoš Janáček

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Leoš Janáček with his wife Zdeňka (1881)

Listen to Leoš Janáček ? / i (born July 3, 1854 in Hukvaldy ( Hochwald ), †  August 12, 1928 in Mährisch-Ostrau ) was a Czech composer . Audio file / audio sample

Life

Janáček was born in Moravia as the son of a village school teacher . He attended the Augustinian monastery in Brno in 1865 , the German secondary school from 1866 to 1869 and studied from 1869 to 1872 at the "KuK Slavic Teachers' Training Institute". In 1872 he became a music teacher there and led various choirs.

From 1874 to 1875 he studied at the organ school in Prague , in 1876 became choirmaster of the Philharmonic Society Umělecká beseda (until 1890) and became friends with Antonín Dvořák . In 1877 he became the private piano teacher of the talented twelve-year-old Zdeňka Schulzová (born August 15, 1865 - February 25, 1938), whom he married on July 13, 1881. Zdeňka was the daughter of the director of the Brno "KuK Slavic Teachers Training Institute", where Janáček first studied and then taught. Daughter Olga was born on August 15, 1882. The newborn was ailing and the parents temporarily separated. On May 16, 1888 the son Vladimír was born; Both children were ravaged by diseases throughout their lives and died young.

From October 1879 to February 1880 Janáček studied at the Leipzig Conservatory with Oscar Paul and Leo Grill and from April to June 1880 in Vienna with Franz Krenn . On December 12, 1880, he conducted the Brno performance of Smetana's Moldau in the Beseda House. In the autumn of 1881 he was employed as director of the new organ school in Brno, the school itself was opened a year later, on October 15, 1882. Janáček remained its director until his retirement in 1919; he was also conductor of the Philharmonic Society from 1881 to 1888. In 1884 he led Gregor Mendel's musical funeral ceremony . Mendel was the abbot of the Augustinian monastery, which Janáček had attended as a child, and was later recognized as a pioneering naturalist.

Janáček's son Vladimír died on November 9, 1890, his daughter Olga on February 26, 1903. There were marital crises. These personal experiences are reflected in his opera Destiny ( Osud ). In 1904 he retired as a music teacher at the teacher training college. In the same year the world premiere of his opera Jenůfa took place, with which Janáček achieved his late breakthrough as a composer at its premieres in Prague in 1916 and in Vienna in 1918.

Max Brod 1914

The Prague author Max Brod wrote German transcriptions for five of his operas in close cooperation with the composer and thus helped him to break through on the international opera stages. Performances in Czech were unthinkable outside of Bohemia and Moravia at the time and were by no means a matter of course even in Prague. Brod was faced with the difficult task of harmonizing his text with music based entirely on the language melody of Czech. This was not possible without the composer's concessions, so that the “German” Jenůfa does not exactly match the Czech one. Brod also contributed through numerous publications and a first biography to Janáček's gradual fame.

Kamila Stösslová with son Otto in 1917

In 1917 Janáček met Kamila Stösslová (1891–1935). The platonic relationship with her, which lasted until his death, put additional strain on his marriage. In 1919 Janáček became director of the newly founded private conservatory in Brno, after the nationalization in 1920 he became professor of a master class in composition. In the last decade of his life he wrote almost all of his masterpieces: the operas Káťa Kabanová , The Cunning Little Vixen , The Makropulos Case and From a House of the Dead , the two string quartets, the Sinfonietta and the Glagolitic Mass .

Janáček collected folk songs from his homeland and observed the language of his compatriots as well as the sounds of nature. These studies flowed into his compositions, and the so-called " speech melody " shaped his style, not only in the vocal works. He developed a theory of speech melody . In this way, Janáček, far removed from the mainstream European music of his time, became one of the great innovators of the 20th century and one of the most important opera composers of all.

Janáček's tomb

In addition to his compositions and classes at the teacher training institute, he regularly wrote features for the Lidové noviny newspaper . They later appeared collectively in two German-language editions.

Janáček died in August 1928 in a sanatorium in Moravian Ostrau as a result of cardiac paralysis following pneumonia; his wife outlived him by almost ten years. He was given a grave of honor in the so-called round of honor , section 25e of the Brno Central Cemetery (Ústřední hřbitov) on Wiener Straße (Vídeňská) 96, accessible from the center of Brno by tram lines 2 and 5. Janáček's grave was designed by the architect Bohuslav Fuchs , who was close to the Bauhaus and built many modern buildings in Brno in the 1920s. His daughter Olga and, among the graves of honor, the conductor František Jílek (1913–1993), an important interpreter of Janáček's works, are buried near Janáček's grave .

Personal style and tonal language

Janáček's music is characterized on a fundamentally tonal basis by strong aphorism and small-scale motifs alongside large cantilenas . The harmony, the instrumentation and the composition are strongly influenced by folkloric elements, but clearly point towards modernity. In many cases, the surprising harmonic progressions that make up his unmistakable style cannot be justified in terms of function.

The never-ending emphases of his musical ideas, the unromantic drama and the great lyrical subtlety are striking. His closeness to nature ( The Cunning Little Fox ) is based on a pantheistic philosophy. Politically, Janáček was close to Pan-Slavism and was therefore reluctant to speak German, although he could speak it flawlessly.

He examined the Czech language for its speech melody. Even with languages ​​he did not understand, for example at a lecture by Rabindranath Thakur in Bengali, he noted down the melody and style. Not only Janáček's vocal music is influenced by it. A cleverly interwoven counterpoint connects the delicate motifs and their wealth of contrasts.

Student of Leoš Janáček

Works

Janáček's autograph on the Sinfonietta's fanfares

Orchestral works

  • Suite for string orchestra (1877)
  • Idyll for string orchestra (1878)
  • Lašské tance ( Lachish dances ) (1889–1890)
  • Hanácké tance ( Hannakische dances ) (1889–1890)
  • Suite (also Serenade) op.3 (1891)
  • Žárlivost ( jealousy ). Prelude to Její pastorkyňa (1894)
  • Šumařovo dítě ( The minstrel's child ). Ballad for orchestra (1912)
  • Taras Bulba . Rhapsody for orchestra (1915-1918)
  • Balada blanická ( Blaník ballad ). Symphonic poem for orchestra (1920)
  • Sinfonietta (1926)
  • Dunaj ( The Danube ). Symphony in four parts (1923–1928; unfinished)
  • Violin Concerto Migration of a Small Soul (1926; fragment)

Chamber music

  • Romance for violin and piano (1879)
  • Dumka for violin and piano (1880)
  • Violin Sonata (1913–1921) ( audio sample: 3rd movement ? / I )Audio file / audio sample
  • Pohádka ( fairy tale ) for cello and piano (1910; reworked 1923)
  • Presto for violoncello and piano (around 1910)
  • String quartet No. 1 based on Leo Tolstoy's novella Die Kreutzersonata (1923)
  • String Quartet No. 2 Intimate Letters (1928)
  • Mládí ( youth ). Suite for wind sextet (1924)
  • Concertino for Piano and Chamber Ensemble (on the contemporary music festival in Frankfurt played Ilona Štěpánová-Kurzová 1926 the premiere and on February 16 in Brno, the Czech premiere)
  • Capriccio for piano left hand and wind instruments (1926), a commission for the pianist Otokar Hollmann , who was seriously injured in his right hand during World War I.

Piano works

  • Zdenčiny variace ( Zdenka Variations ). Author con variazioni (1880)
  • Národní tance na Moravě ( Folk dances from Moravia ) (1891-1893)
  • Po zarostlém chodníčku ( On overgrown paths ) (1901–1911) (partly originallycomposedfor harmonium )
  • Sonata 1. X. 1905 "Z ulice" ( Sonata 1. X. 1905 "Von der Straße" ) (1905)
  • V mlhách ( In the Fog ) (1912)
  • Vzpomínka ( memory ) (1928)

Vocal works

  • Rákos Rákoczy . Ballet with Singing (1891)
  • Hospodine! ( Lord have mercy ) for solo quartet, mixed double choir, organ, harps and brass instruments (1896)
  • Amarus . Lyric cantata for solos, choir and orchestra (1897)
  • Otčenáš ( Our Father ). Cantata for tenor, choir, organ and harp (1901)
  • Elegie na smrt dcery Olgy ( Elegy on the death of the daughter Olga ). Cantata for tenor, choir and piano (1903)
  • Zdrávas Maria ( Ave Maria ) for tenor, choir and organ (1904)
  • Mass in E flat major for choir and organ (1907–1908, unfinished)
  • Na Soláni čarták ( Above on the heights ). Cantata for male choir with orchestra (1911)
  • Věčné evangelium ( The Eternal Gospel ). Legend for solos, choir and orchestra (1914)
  • Glagolská mše ( Glagolitic Mass ). Cantata for solos, choir, orchestra and organ (1926)
  • numerous male, female and mixed choirs

Songs

  • Jarní píseň ( Spring Song ) (1897; edited 1905)
  • Zápisník zmizelého ( Diary of a Missing Person ). For tenor, alto and three female voices with piano (1917–1919)
  • numerous folk song collections and arrangements
Janáček monument in Hukvaldy to commemorate the first performance of the opera The Cunning Little Vixen

Operas

Commemoration

Music Mile Vienna

In Brno, within the organization of the Moravian State Museum, a permanent exhibition about the composer has been set up in the garden house of the former organ school. It includes Janáček's study with his piano and an exhibition where you can learn more about the composer's life and work.

Also in Brno, the Janáček Academy and the Janáček Theater bear the composer's name.

Under the title "Archives of Leoš Janáček", documents belonging to Janáček have been included in the UNESCO list of World Document Heritage .

Festivals

Janáček memorial in Ostrava by David Moješčík , 2017

In 2004, on the occasion of its 150th birthday, the Brno National Theater held a Janáček Festival in two of its three venues, the Mahen Theater and the Janáček Theater (the third house is the Divadlo Reduta), which initially had no successor. It was not until 2008, when Tomáš Hanus became chief conductor of the house, that he again launched a Janáček Festival as a biennial, which so far (2018) took place in November and December in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2018 and other Brno composers such as for example Erich Wolfgang Korngold or the composer Vítězslava Kaprálová . There are also Janáček festivals in Ostrava, where Janáček died, and in the birthplace of Hukvaldy. The oldest festival is that in Ostrava, "Janáčkův Máj" (German "Janáčeks Mai Ostrava"), it has been taking place since 1976 and is not limited to Janáček. The one in Hukvaldy has taken place 21 times so far, has only concert music and a wide range of predominantly Slavic composers in the program.

literature

Alphabetical

  • Max Brod : Leoš Janáček Život a dílo . Hudební Matice Umělecké Besedy, Prague 1924 - German: Leoš Janáček - Life and Work Universal Edition, Vienna / Zurich / London 1956 (German first edition around 1925).
  • Max Brod: Janáček and others. Collection of reviews of Janáček's works . Edited by Robert Schmitt. Scheubel, Berlin 2012, ISBN 3-937416-31-5
  • Michael Ewans: Janáček's operas. With 51 music samples (original title: Janáček's Tragic Operas , translated by Sebastian Vogt). Reclam, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-15-010301-0 .
  • Walter Felsenstein : Lecture at the Janáček Congress Brno (1958). In: Felsenstein / Friedrich / Herz: Music theater. Contributions to methodology and staging concepts . Publishing house Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1970
  • Michael Füting: Leoš Janáček. The operatic genius. Transit, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-88747-291-7 .
  • Wolfram Goertz : "How lost, born this way" . In: Die Zeit , No. 28/2004. “The composer Leoš Janáček was despised for a long time. Now it is being played again - a season review on the occasion of his 150th birthday. "
  • Kurt Honolka : Leoš Janáček. His life - his work - his time . Belser, Stuttgart / Zurich 1982, ISBN 3-7630-9027-4 .
  • Helmut C. Jacobs: “ On the overgrown path by Leoš Janáček (1854–1928). The original version for harmonium, its programmatic content and its transfer to the accordion. ”In: ders. / Ralf Kaupenjohann (Ed.): Brennpunkte II . . Essays, discussions, opinions and factual information on the subject of the accordion . Augemus Musikverlag, Bochum 2002, pp. 39–51.
  • Leoš Janáček: Album for Kamila Stösslová . Edited by Jarmila Procházková. Moravian State Museum , Brno 1994
  • Kerstin Lücker (Ed.): Janáček's foundation of a music theory. The early writings from 1884-1888 . Stroemfeld, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-87877-978-X .
  • Jiří Location : Leoš Janáček - the late savage: love and life in operas and letters . Bärenreiter, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1826-2
  • Meinhard Saremba: Leoš Janáček. Time - life - work - effect . Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel 2001, ISBN 3-7618-1500-X .
  • Christoph Schwandt : Leoš Janáček. A biography . Schott, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-254-08412-5 .
  • Jaroslav Šeda: Leoš Janáček. Prague 1961.
  • Leo Spies (Ed.): Leoš Janáček - Feuilletons from the Lidové noviny. Selected, expanded, with contributions and comments by Jan Racek and Leoš Firkušný. Translated by Charlotte Mahler. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1959.
  • Bohumír Štědroň : Leoš Janáček in letters and memories. Prague 1955.
  • Bohumír Štědroň: Dílo Leoše Janáčka. Prague 1959.
  • Bohumír Štědroň: Leoš Janáček. Prague 1976.
  • Theodora Straková (Ed.): Music of Life. Sketches, feature sections, studies. Leoš Janáček. Translated from the Czech by Jan Gruna. With a study: “Janáček, the writer” by Jan Racek. Reclam, Leipzig 1979.
  • Jaroslav Vogel: Leoš Janáček dramatik. Prague 1948.
  • Jaroslav Vogel: Leoš Janáček, life and work . (Leoš Janáček, Život a Dílo). Prague 1958.
  • Janáček, Leoš. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 3, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1965, p. 69.

Radio

  • Katja K. radio play, WDR, 2004, 58 min., Text: Jiri Ort, director: Christoph Pragua
  • Leoš Janáček - the late savage. Music feature, Bayerischer Rundfunk, 2004, 83 min., Written and directed by Jiří Ort
  • When the earth shook. II. String quartet. Music feature, Deutschlandradio Kultur, 2008, 29 min., Written and directed by Jiri Ort. With Rena and René Dumont.

Movie

Web links

Commons : Leoš Janáček  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://mendelu.cz/en/24741-gregor-johann-mendel accessed on November 23, 2018
  2. ↑ gotobrno.cz ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on December 14, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gotobrno.cz
  3. ^ Christoph Schwandt : Leoš Janáček. A biography . Schott , Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-254-08412-5
  4. ↑ Internet page about piano music for the left hand (English)
  5. ^ Moravian Provincial Museum, Brno, Leoš Janáček Memorial, accessed on September 22, 2012
  6. ^ Archives of Leoš Janáček | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Accessed March 8, 2018 .
  7. ^ Zs. Opernwelt 1/2011; opernwelt 1/2013, website of the festival janacek-brno.cz , accessed on March 7, 2013
  8. ↑ janackovyhukvaldy.cz , accessed on November 23, 2014
  9. ↑ janackuvmaj.cz , accessed on November 23, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Janáček, Leoš
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech composer
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Hukvaldy
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1928
Place of death Moravian Ostrava