S U M M A RY Zapletal - Leoš Janáček a pozdní obrození na Moravě - Resume.indd 1 08.06.2023 20:39:08 How did Janáček become Janáček? More precisely: How come that Janáček, a talented, but unknown inmate of the Old Brno monastery, became the Janáček, a leading figure of the Czech culture in Moravia? The book Leoš Janáček and the Late National Revival in Moravia seeks an answer to this question primarily with regard to the reception of Janáček’s activi­ ties in the period 1872–1888. The combination of knowledge and meth­ ods of music and cultural history, literary theory, and anthropology makes it possible to observe the young Janáček not only as an object of different narratives, “language games”, practices and performances, but also as their actor. The monograph is a result of systematic analysis of large corpus of hitherto almost ignored sources, new reading of previously scrutinised sources, and synthesis of a considerable amount of secondary literature. It thus provides an interpretation of the young Janáček which is quite dif­ ferent from those offered by the previous seminal monographs (Helfert 1939; Tyrrell 2006). Many years before he became recognised as the founder of the Czech­ Moravian national opera (1894), and long before the successful perfor­ mance of Jenufa in Prague (1916) and Vienna (1918) strengthened his position in the canon of Czech music and established his lasting inter­ national reputation, Janáček presented himself as a composer, organist, church musician, music critic, and, first and foremost, as a choirmaster and conductor. Except for Helfert, earlier musicologists have been so anxious to comment on Janáček’s later works and to tell the story about “the unrecognized genius”, that they have not paid much attention to the reception of his early activities. And, therefore, they have not realized that Janáček came to be the Janáček – the recognized genius – when he was barely thirty years old. In the present book, the problematics is explained primarily with regard to the emancipation efforts of the Czech nation and to the Czech­German relations in the 19th­century Brno. The book thus also offers a new perspective on the phenomenon of National Revival in Moravia. At the beginning of the 1870s, Janáček introduced himself pub­ licly in Brno, the capital of Moravia, and beyond the city limits as well, as an excellent regenschori, organist, and a pupil of Pavel Křížkovský (1820–1885). As a church musician, Janáček followed the path laid out by Křížkovský and oriented by the Cecilian Movement. Relatively few sources for the reception of Janáček as a church musician have been pre­ served, mainly due to the functional nature of this activity (liturgical and paraliturgical music generated almost no daily press coverage). Zapletal - Leoš Janáček a pozdní obrození na Moravě - Resume.indd 2 2 08.06.2023 20:39:08 to sp wa th tie Th wh cr m pa to Ce in m Ge br Br sin 28 Jan 18 Cz siv te M co up du ce ce M co 18 ev W ce se at ry, he wer vi­ th­ gy of ut of ed re. dif­ ert ch­ or­ his er­ ist, er so ut to ed he th he so in ub­ ell, ký ut ew re­ nd In parallel with his activities as a church musician Janáček soon began to earn a reputation in the field of secular music as well. After 1873, he spent three years as a choirmaster of the vocal society Svatopluk, which was regarded at the time as the best choir in Brno. The appointment of the young Janáček to this position was probably conditioned by the abili­ ties he demonstrated during his performances in the Old Brno basilica. This was the beginning of a lively critical reception of Janáček in the press, which has continued for several decades. In the 1870s and 1880s, the critical reception took place mainly on the pages of Moravská orlice, the main Czech daily newspaper in Moravia, and also in (musical) magazines, particularly in Prague­based Dalibor. Even after becoming the choirmaster of Svatopluk, Janáček continued to receive critical reception as a church musician, mainly in the magazine Cecilie (later renamed Cyril). Easter productions in the Old Brno basilica in 1874 and 1875 were his most notable achievements in this field. He mainly performed compositions by Palestrina, Křížkovský, and by the German and Czech Cecilian­oriented composers. After arriving in Beseda brněnská in 1876, the reception of Janáček as a church musician receded. Beseda brněnská was the most important Czech music society in Brno at the time. Janáček worked as its choirmaster and artistic director since 1876. During the twelve years in Beseda brněnská, Janáček realized 28 productions and performed 102 Czech and 36 foreign compositions. Janáček’s arrival in Beseda, and especially the first concert, held on 3 April 1876, became major events in Brno Czech culture; they generated adequate Czech press coverage, both in terms of quantity (numerous and exten­ sive texts) and quality (texts of strongly pathetic and enthusiastic charac­ ter). The reviews of these productions were published mainly in the daily Moravská orlice. In Moravská orlice, as a reaction to the aforementioned concert, the longest text about Janáček and his music was published up to that time; specifically, it was a review of the male chorus Zpěvná duma, which was, in the context of original Czech Brno music, magnifi­ cent in terms of scope and compositional conception. Almost every con­ cert of Beseda under Janáček’s baton was a success with the audience. The four challenging compositions for soloists, choir and orchestra – Mozart’s Requiem in 1878, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis a year later, and two compositions by Dvořák, Stabat mater in 1882 and The Spectre’s Bride in 1888 – performed during the Easter seasons were the most significant events and the greatest achievements of Janáček as a conductor of Beseda. With this series, Janáček had founded the tradition of “great cantata con­ certs”, which then usually represented the highlight of Beseda brněnská season; this tradition lasted well into the 20th century. Zapletal - Leoš Janáček a pozdní obrození na Moravě - Resume.indd 3 3 08.06.2023 20:39:08 The jubilee concert of Beseda brněnská, held on 10 January 1886 and repeated a week later as probably the first so­called popular concert in the Czech Lands (attended by an unprecedentedly large and socially wide audience), became an event of great social significance. The Dvořákian concert held on 15 December 1878, including the Brno premiere of Slavonic Dances and Janáček’s Idyll for String Orchestra, was an equally significant event. Also, in terms of critical reception, one of the most successful concerts of Beseda brněnská took place on 18 March 1883 (Janáček conducted Dvořák’s Symphony No. 6 in D major, Schicksalslied by Brahms and The Moldau by Smetana). A fundamental turning point in the reception of Janáček as a composer was the premiere of his Suite for String Orchestra in 1877, which thrilled the Brno critics and audience. Even many years later, these concerts were remembered in the Czech press as victories of the Czech culture in Brno over the German one. From the beginning of the 1860s, the Brno’s musical culture was becoming more deeply divided into Czech and German factions. The situation of the Czech minority in Brno was worse than that of the Ger­ mans from a demographic perspective as well as from social, political, and cultural standpoints. Brno’s Czechs were also worse off in compari­ son with Prague’s Czechs, who constituted the majority in their city. It was, however, in the strength of their national consciousness that Brno’s Czechs were dominant over the Germans: German nationalism in Moravia came into being later than its Czech counterpart and as a defensive reaction. The 1870s in Brno were characterised by a growing nationalist movement. The Czech culture of Brno in the 1870s and 1880s was primarily a nationalist culture. After the impulses ushered in the 1860s, the Czech minority in Brno attempted to emancipate itself further, and it felt that musical culture might be the main arena in which it could win over the German superiority. From 1873, Janáček stood at the forefront of this nationalistic cultural struggle, in which the Czechs did not emerge as definitive victors until after the sad events leading up to 1945. From this point of view, the performance of Missa solemnis – a composition paradoxi­ cally composed by a “German” author, but carrying only weak national connotations and considered to be of universal cultural value – appeared as the first great victorious battle of the culture war in question. The fact that Janáček became the leader of the Czechs in this battle secured him almost a cult status in Czech circles of Moravia. The chamber concerts Janáček organized with the well­known female piano virtuoso Amálie Wickenhauser­Nerudová (1834–1890) between 1877 and 1879 represented the third important area of Janáček’s early Zapletal - Leoš Janáček a pozdní obrození na Moravě - Resume.indd 4 4 08.06.2023 20:39:08 ar in 6J ap tio bl re hi wa au to co is as da or tio ha pe m 18 lis an i.e of m an pr na pr m pr th su ria iza th pa an nd in de an of ly st 83 by in or en as as he er­ al, ari­ ty. at m as ng ily ch at he his as his xi­ nal ed act m ale en rly artistic activities. None of Janáček’s compositions were performed dur­ ing the chamber concerts. At each of them, except for the concert held on 6 January 1878, Janáček participated not only as an organizer, but also as a pianist (but never as a soloist). The chamber concerts raised the atten­ tion of and met with positive response from both Czech and – remarka­ bly enough – German audience and critics, since they brought modern repertoire which was otherwise inaccessible in Brno. Concerning the history of Janáček reception, it is noteworthy that this series of concerts was the first event which considerably attracted the attention of German audience and critics. To a certain extent, this attention is attributable to the fact that a large part of repertoire consisted of music by German composers. In this regard, the fame of Amálie Wickenhauser­Nerudová is also significant: the Brno­based German press often wrote about her as “our” or “our familiar” (unsere heimische) artist. It is difficult, nowa­ days, to determine whether this adjective meant German, or Brno­based, or Moravian, that is to say, that local patriotism and national appropria­ tion could have mingled in this case. The musical­critical and theoretical work of Janáček himself also had a great influence on the formation of Janáček early reception. In the period being studied, he published critical articles and theoretical studies mainly on the pages of Moravská orlice and Cecilie. Between 1884 and 1888 he published his texts almost exclusively in the magazine Hudební listy, which he had founded and which he edited. In his music­critical and theoretical texts, Janáček was initially devoted to Pavel Křížkovský, i.e. to the Cecilian reform of church music, and appeared as a supporter of the aesthetic Formalism and the Classicizing tendencies in modern music. Later, he promoted “Slavic” cultural reciprocity in Hudební listy and showed himself as a Russophile. At the same time, Janáček constantly presented himself in Hudební listy as an artist of a strongly nationalist nature. An important aspect of Janáček reception is represented by the protracted conflicts between Janáček’s Hudební listy and the Dalibor magazine. From the beginning, the Brno­based Hudební listy clearly profiled themselves against the Prague­based magazine, its critics and the composers supported by it, and, in other words, against “Prague” as such. Janáček’s self­presentation as an anti­Smetanist, an anti­Wagne­ rian and a supporter of Dvořák was closely related to this conceptual­ ization (Dvořák was often conceptualized as a “Moravian” composer in this context). Janáček was participating, primarily as a choirmaster, at important patriotic or nationalist, usually festive, events that took place in Brno and Moravia at the time, some of them being among the most influential. Zapletal - Leoš Janáček a pozdní obrození na Moravě - Resume.indd 5 5 08.06.2023 20:39:08 These were, in particular, the following events (they took place in Brno, unless otherwise stated): the ceremonial unveiling of the Svatopluk ban­ ner (1873); the celebration in honour of the memory of Josef Dobrovský (1875); entertainment for the benefit of the Radhošť students’ society (1875); the laying of the foundation stone (1877) and, respectively, the consecration of the new building (1878) of the Czech Teacher Training Institute; the celebrations of the ten­year existence of Radhošť students’ society (1879); the ceremonial unveiling of the František Palacký monu­ ment in Rožnov (1879); the visit of emperor Franz Joseph I (1880); the celebration of twenty years of Beseda brněnská (1880); the celebration in honour of the Sokol association from Kolín (1882); the trip of Prague’s Hlahol society to Moravia (1884); the ceremonial opening of the Czech Grammar School’s new building (1884); the funeral of Křížkovský (1885); the Radhošť students’ society festivities (1885); the 25th anniversary of Beseda brněnská (1886); the celebrations of 400 years since the intro­ duction of letterpress printing in Moravia (1886). As far as the media coverage is concerned, the most attention was attracted by the Radhošť entertainment in 1875. Besides, Janáček’s musical productions in Brno’s “Czech” church of St. Michal in the second half of the 1870s were impor­ tant, not only with regard to the reception of Janáček as a propagator of the Cecilian reform, but also as a National Revivalist. During the fifteen years discussed in the present book, 1872–1888, Janáček became the most important figure of the Brno Czech musical culture of that time. But not only Czech and not only musical. Both “not only” require a more precise explanation. Let us start with the second one. Musical culture played a key role in the process of emancipation of the Czech nation after 1860, a fact that is widely known. Within the culture of the Czech minority in Brno in the 1870s and 1880s, this importance became even stronger; no other area of original Czech cultural produc­ tion in Moravia (literature, fine arts, drama, sciences and humanities) was equal to music at that time either in terms of quality or social signifi­ cance. The Brno’s Czechs of the 1870s yearned for art that would be only theirs and, at the same time, at the height of its time: the art that they would rejoice in, in which they would realize themselves, and through which they would also triumph over the local Germans. Janáček satisfied these desires of Brno’s Czechs, he gave them great art. In this regard, Janáček was born into a very favourable historical sit­ uation. In the second half of the 1870s, he basically had no serious com­ petitor in Brno; and if he flexed his innate artistic and organizational muscle in this way, it was only a matter of time before he would become one of the leading and most appreciated figures in the Czech culture of Zapletal - Leoš Janáček a pozdní obrození na Moravě - Resume.indd 6 6 08.06.2023 20:39:08 M ris to th th re in a im m fo de he in pe co aq in Cz wi W no su gu Ze Cz sh pa bo se wh an 18 de it un m ca of no, an­ ký ty he ng nts’ nu­ he in e’s ch 5); of ro­ ia ošť o’s or­ of 88, al ot ne. he re ce uc­ as ifi­ nly ey gh ed sit­ m­ al me of Moravia. Let us also be aware of one important condition for Janáček’s rise to the role of the main Moravian composer and conductor: similarly to the case of Smetana’s rise after returning from Sweden to Prague in the early 1860s, ten years later, there was a strong social desire among the Brno’s Czechs for a great national (Czech) and at the same time regional (Moravian) musician. The “Moravian Smetana” was still miss­ ing in the early 1870s: a leading figure who would come to the forefront, a star who could be celebrated and could serve as a model worthy of imitation, an emblematic figure who would represent Czech­Moravian musical culture as a whole. The situation in Brno after 1874 was optimal for Janáček: Křížkovský worked in Olomouc and, above all, he no longer devoted himself to secular music, Tovačovský was dead (but before that he worked mainly in Olomouc and Vienna, not in Brno), Vojáček lived in Russia, and Norbert Javůrek in different places abroad. Other Brno personalities who came into consideration probably lacked Janáček’s combination of youthful energy, charisma and abilities. Janáček was a quelqu’un de nouveau. This brings us to the second “not only”. Of course, the cultural boom in Brno led by Janáček was important mainly for the emancipating Czech nation there, but the relative quality of Janáček’s productions with Beseda brněnská and of the chamber concerts he organized with Wickenhauser­Neurdová often attracted also German audience and did not remain without a response from the German press in Brno. The suppression of national concerns was an essential aspect that distin­ guished how the two major German Brno­based periodicals (Brünner Zeitung, Mährischer Correspondent) wrote about Janáček from how Czech periodicals did. The early reception of Janáček by Brno’s Germans shows how the Liberalist conception of German music and the local patriotism were penetrating or maybe even transcending the national borders. Only to some extent, however. More precisely, German critics seem to have adopted, in a way, those aspects of Janáček and his activities which corresponded with their conception of Germanness (Deutschtum) and repressed the aspects of the otherness. Since Janáček’s entry into public musical life at the beginning of the 1870s, the Czech musical culture of Brno objectively grew, and this ten­ dency continued in the following fifteen years. This does not mean that it became world class, but given the starting conditions of 1872, it was undoubtedly a steep rise. At that time, Janáček had already fully imple­ mented what we now see as one of his life’s missions: “to transform musi­ cal Brno according to his own vision and bring about the polarization of Czech musical culture: Brno was no longer supposed to be ‘second in Zapletal - Leoš Janáček a pozdní obrození na Moravě - Resume.indd 7 7 08.06.2023 20:39:08 order’, but one of two equally powerful Czech centres” (Fukač). Janáček and his followers finally managed to achieve this goal. Since 1918, Brno has been a focus of musical culture and musical thought fully compara­ ble to Prague or Vienna. It was crucial for the early Janáček reception that its dominant form was determined by the cultural circle of Moravian­Catholic patriotism, following on from František Sušil. It was in this cultural circle – no mat­ ter how internally diverse it was in terms of taste and ideology, and no matter how it manifested itself in different periodicals – that the young Janáček acquired almost a cult status. A key factor in this receptive pro­ cess was the conceptualized connection of Janáček to the trio of artists SUŠIL–KŘÍŽKOVSKÝ–DVOŘÁK, who were conceived as representatives of three generations of Moravian music. And with regard to this genera­ tional logic (more or less explicitly formulated, but always at least impli­ citly present), Janáček­composer was understood as the potential fourth in the given chain. In addition, Janáček had indisputable merit as a performing artist and organizer for promoting the Czech nation and its culture in Brno and Moravia. These efforts of his not only earned him a heroic status, but also manifested themselves in the construction of a mythical image of the early Janáček in the Czech press. We can name the mythical image with the phrase “tireless resurrectionist”, since it combines two dominant topoi of early Janáček reception: the messianic concept of the National Revivalist significance of his artistic activity and the power of will com­ bined with extraordinary hard work which were attributed to Janáček as his main character traits. At the same time, both topoi correspond to the late National Revivalist character of Czech culture in Brno in the 1870s and 80s. The reception of Janáček’s artistic activities was primarily con­ ditioned by their specific functions in the Czech bourgeoisie culture of Brno: a culture that was, in many respects, late revivalist (in terms of the National Revival), ideologically oriented by the Old Czech political move­ ment and defined by a combination of Roman Catholicism, Moravian patriotism, and Czech nationalism. Zapletal - Leoš Janáček a pozdní obrození na Moravě - Resume.indd 8 8 08.06.2023 20:39:08