Leoš janáček sinfonietta

Building a library

Freedom of the city: (above) Brno, whose sights are depicted in four movements of the Sinfonietta; Kamila Stösslová, subject of Janáček’s infatuation, pictured here in 1917; (opposite) mightily miffed, composer Karel Kovařovic stood in Janáček’s way

The work

In 1904, the 50-year-old Leoš Janáček enjoyed his first triumph on home ground with Jenůfa, a tragic opera of rustic life, the musical score of which closely followed the speech-rhythms of his native Moravia. This set the pattern for almost everything that followed. It was premiered to great acclaim in Janáček’s native city of Brno, but because of his longstanding dispute with Karel Kovařovic, director of Prague’s opera house, Jenůfa wasn’t heard in the capital until 1916. Productions in Vienna and Cologne, albeit in a bastardised German translation, took place in 1918, the year which saw the birth of Czechoslovakia and Janáček’s belated appearance on the international stage.

His late great works were composed in the last decade of his life in what amounted to a creative frenzy almost unparalleled in musical history. Having discovered his own voice, he abandoned most of the recognised norms of composition, and instead his notebooks were crammed with snatches of Moravian folk-song and what he called speech melody and his observations on the rhythm of natural sounds, birdsong and daily life.

The creative burst of energy in his old age was thanks largely to his infatuation with Kamila Stösslová, a happily married woman 38 years his junior, whom he met in 1917 and who became the muse for virtually everything he composed thereafter. She was his inspiration for the female protagonists in his operas Kát’a Kabanová (1921), The Cunning Little Vixen (1923) and The Makropulos Case (1925); and for his most passionate, personal utterances, the two string quartets entitled ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ (1923) and ‘Intimate Letters’ (1928). His obsessive love was no secret and must have strained not only his already precarious marriage but also the outwardly friendly relationship between the Janáčeks and the Stössels. However, it never developed into a love affair.

It was on an afternoon walk in Stösslová’s home-town of Písek that Kamila and Janáček stopped to listen to a military band in the local park.

The brass fanfares made a great impression on the composer, and when a year later he was invited to write a short piece for the forthcoming Sokol Festival – a national