A compelling portrait of this enigmatic musical genius within the context of the cultural and political currents of his time

This is the fullest catalogue in any language of the works of the great Czech composer Leo%s Jan %cek. The entry for each work includes detailed information on date of composition, source of texts, performing forces, duration, manuscript locations, publication, performances and production, dedication, and literature. The catalogue also includes a complete annotated edition of the composer's writings.

In the first week of May 1988, more than seventy scholars and musicians from five countries gathered at Washington University in St. Louis to participate in the first conference and festival ever to take place in the United States on the Moravian composer Leos Janácek. This volume, arranged in seven parts, is a collection of thirty-five of the papers presented at the conference. It is the first large collection of essays in English concerning Janácek's music, and the only collection of proceedings from a Janácek symposium to be published in the last twenty-five years... most of its essays deal with Janácek's music, while some with other Czech music, mostly from before the time of Bedrich Smetana. This breadth of scope is not a weakness of either the conference or the volume, since it places Janácek in historical perspective, and since the articles that deal with the earlier music are among the best in the volume and are deserving of a forum. John K. Novak, Notes June 1996

Once thought to be a provincial composer of only passing interest to eccentrics, Leos Janácek (1854-1928) is now widely acknowledged as one of the most powerful and original creative figures of his time. Banned for all purposes from the Prague stage until the age of 62, and unable to make it even out of the provincial capital of Brno, his operas are now performed in dynamic productions throughout the globe. This volume brings together some of the world's foremost Janácek scholars to look closely at a broad range of issues surrounding his life and work. Representing the latest in Janácek scholarship, the essays are accompanied by newly translated writings by the composer himself. The collection opens with an essay by Leon Botstein who clarifies and amplifies how Max Brod contributed to Janácek 's international success by serving as "point man" between Czechs and Germans, Jews and non-Jews. John Tyrrell, the dean of Janácek scholars, distills more than thirty years of research in "How Janácek Composed Operas," while Diane Paige considers Janácek's liason with a married woman and the question of the artist's muse. Geoffrey Chew places the idea of the adulterous muse in the larger context of Czech fin de siècle decadence in his thoroughgoing consideration of Janácek's problematic opera Osud. Derek Katz examines the problems encountered by Janácek's satirically patriotic "Excursions of Mr. Broucek" in the post-World War I era of Czechoslovak nationalism, while Paul Wingfield mounts a defense of Janácek against allegations of cruelty in his wife's memoirs. In the final essay, Michael Beckerman asks how much true history can be culled from one of Janácek's business cards. The book then turns to writings by Janácek previously unpublished in English. These not only include fascinating essays on Naturalism, opera direction, and Tristan and Isolde, but four impressionistic chronicles of the "speech melodies" of daily life. They provide insight into Janácek's revolutionary method of composition, and give us the closest thing we will ever have to the "heard" record of a Czech pre-war past-or any past, for that matter.

In addition to his activities as a composer, Leos Janácek was a prolific literary personality whose works include not only letters, feuilletons, criticisms, autobiography, ethnographic and pedagogical studies but also numerous articles dealing with music theory. They are unique documents, stimulating, diverse, exciting, and sometimes bewildering, they reflect Janácek's intense involvement with contemporary trends in philosophy, ethnography, physiology, and music theory, and his struggles in these worlds; yet they can hardly be found on a single bookshelf outside the Czech Republic (From the Introduction).

One of the most original and engaging composers of the twentieth century, Leos Janáçek is now regarded as one of its major musical dramatists. His operas have become a regular part of the repertory, but a full understanding of their diverse subjects and backgrounds has been hampered by the lack of source materials in English. John Tyrrell has here selected and translated the chief literary documents relating to the genesis and early performances of each of the composer's nine operas and presented them in the form of a compelling documentary narrative. Janáçek was a vigorous letter-writer and kept every letter he received. A vast quantity of material on his life has survived, providing a unique insight into his working methods and attitudes toward his operas. Scrupulously translated and annotated, the sources in this volume have not previously been brought together in this way. Some have appeared in scattered and often inaccessible publications in Czech, and others, such as the sequence of daily letters that Janáçek wrote to his wife during the rehearsals for the Prague premiere of Jenufa, or his instructions to his librettist for Fate, have never been published before. The book is complemented by a chronology of Janáçek's operas keyed to the numbered documents in each chapter, a bibliography, and a list of sources. Drawing on twenty-five years of work at the Janáçek archive in Brno, this work is a classic of music documentary scholarship. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Once thought to be a provincial composer of only passing interest to eccentrics, Leos Janácek (1854-1928) is now widely acknowledged as one of the most powerful and original creative figures of his time. Banned for all purposes from the Prague stage until the age of 62, and unable to make it even out of the provincial capital of Brno, his operas are now performed in dynamic productions throughout the globe. This volume brings together some of the world's foremost Janácek scholars to look closely at a broad range of issues surrounding his life and work. Representing the latest in Janácek scholarship, the essays are accompanied by newly translated writings by the composer himself. The collection opens with an essay by Leon Botstein who clarifies and amplifies how Max Brod contributed to Janácek 's international success by serving as "point man" between Czechs and Germans, Jews and non-Jews. John Tyrrell, the dean of Janácek scholars, distills more than thirty years of research in "How Janácek Composed Operas," while Diane Paige considers Janácek's liason with a married woman and the question of the artist's muse. Geoffrey Chew places the idea of the adulterous muse in the larger context of Czech fin de siècle decadence in his thoroughgoing consideration of Janácek's problematic opera Osud. Derek Katz examines the problems encountered by Janácek's satirically patriotic "Excursions of Mr. Broucek" in the post-World War I era of Czechoslovak nationalism, while Paul Wingfield mounts a defense of Janácek against allegations of cruelty in his wife's memoirs. In the final essay, Michael Beckerman asks how much true history can be culled from one of Janácek's business cards. The book then turns to writings by Janácek previously unpublished in English. These not only include fascinating essays on Naturalism, opera direction, and Tristan and Isolde, but four impressionistic chronicles of the "speech melodies" of daily life. They provide insight into Janácek's revolutionary method of composition, and give us the closest thing we will ever have to the "heard" record of a Czech pre-war past-or any past, for that matter.

Kát'a Kabanová is both the first Janáček opera to have been performed in Britain and the one which has received the most productions in Britain and the USA. In this book the author brings together letters, early reviews and other documents (most of them translated from Czech for the first time) on the opera's composition and its early performances. A group of key interpretations of the opera ranges from one by the opera's German translator and Janáčeks first biographer Max Brod to specially commissioned essays by Wilfrid Mellers and by David Pountney, producer of the highly successful Welsh National Opera/Scottish Opera Janáček cycle.

John Tyrrell's biography of the Leos Janácek is the culmination of a life's work in the field. It stands upon his existing documentary studies of Janácek's operas and translations of other key sources and his examination of thousands of still unpublished letters and other documents in the Janácek archive in Brno. Altogether it provides the most detailed account of Janácek's life in any language and offers new views of Janácek as composer, writer, thinker and human being. Volume 1, which goes up to the outbreak of the First World War and Janácek's sixtieth birthday in the summer of 1914, consists of chronological chapters providing a straightforward account of Janácek's life year by year and another forty contextual chapters. Topics include on-going sequences ('Music as autobiography I', etc.; 'Janácek's knowledge of opera I', etc.) and individual chapters on Janácek as a teacher, as a theorist, as an music ethnographer, on his speech-melody theory, his relationship to particularly influential operas (Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, Charpentier's Louise), on his mentors (such as Antonín Dvorák) and his bêtes noires (such as Karel Kovarovic). A particular feature are the specially commissioned chapters on Janácek's health by Dr Stephen Lock (one of the editors of the Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine, OUP 1994 and 2001, editor of the British Medical Journal, 1975-91, and a Janácek enthusiast since the early postwar broadasts on the Third Programme), and on Janácek's earnings and finances by Dr Jirí Zahrádka (curator of the Janácek archive in Brno, and editor of authentic editions of Sárka and The Excursions of Mr Broucek).

In this fascinating description of Janácek's most important works The Glagolithic Mass and its history, Paul Wingfield brings together information on all significant aspects of the work.