Janacek and His World

by Beckerman, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780691116761
• ISBN10: 0691116768
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-04
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

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 The book then turns to writings by Janácek previously unpublished in English.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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Janácek and Our World	1	(12)
MICHAEL BECKERMAN
PART I ESSAYS
The Cultural Politics of Language and Music: Max Brod and Leoš Janácek
LEON BOTSTEIN	13	(42)
How Janácek Composed Operas
JOHN TYRRELL	55	(24)
Janácek and the Captured Muse
DIANE M. PAIGE	79	(20)
Reinterpreting Janácek and Kamila: Dangerous Liaisons in Czech Fin-de-Siècle Music and Literature
GEOFFREY CHEW	99	(46)
A Turk and a Moravian in Prague: Janácek's Broucek and the Perils of Musical Patriotism
DEREK KATZ	145	(20)
Zdenka Janácková's Memoirs and the Fallacy of Music as Autobiography
PAUL WINGFIELD	165	(32)
Janácek's Vizitka
MICHAEL BECKERMAN	197	(22)
PART II JANACEK'S WRITINGS
TRANSLATED BY VÉRONIQUE FIRKUSNY-CALLEGARI AND TATIANA FIRKUSNY; INTRODUCED, AND WITH COMMENTARY, BY MICHAEL BECKERMAN
Introduction: Janácek-Writer
MICHAEL BECKERMAN	219	(2)
"Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner" (1884-1885)	221	(5)
"My Luhacovice" (1903)	226	(13)
"Last Year and This Year" (1905)	239	(15)
"An Example from Podskali" (1909)	254	(4)
"Whitsunday 1910 in Prague" (1910)	258	(13)
"Stage Direction" (1918)
EDITED BY EVA DRLIKOVÁ	271	(16)
"Janácek on Naturalism" (1924-1925)
EDITED BY MILO STEDRON	287	(20)
Index	307	(8)
Notes on Contributors	315