Leoš Janáček is one of the most remarkable figures not only of Czech but also of world musical culture. Born on 3. 7. 1854 in Hukvaldy as the ninth child of a country schoolmaster, he came to Brno at the age of eleven to receive a thorough musical education in the foundation of the Old Brno monastery, and connected his whole life with Brno. From the 1870s onwards, in this then-provincial city, he developed a consistent educational, organisational, pedagogical and artistic activity, alongside his own compositional activity. Janáček’s compositional beginnings were influenced by his study of Moravian folklore and, a little later, by his interest in the psychological aspects of human speech. On these foundations his distinctive way of musical expression crystallized, a characteristic feature of which is the brevity of musical ideas and the sharp contrast of their connection.
Janáček’s most important field of activity was opera. The composer created nine operas, the third of which, Jenůfa, was nine years in the making and waited a very long time for recognition – as did the composer himself – but after performances at the National Theatre in Prague in 1916 and in Vienna in 1918, it established Janáček’s worldwide fame. It was only then, in the last decade of his life, when Janáček finally received recognition for his work, that he produced in quick succession his most important works, which he used to greatly enrich the repertoire of opera houses (Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropulos Case and From the House of the Dead) and concert stages (The Notebook of the Disappeared, two string quartets, the wind sextet Mládí, Sinfonietta, Glagolitic Mass and many others). The composer died on 12. 8. 1928 in Ostrava, he is buried in the Central Cemetery in Brno in a circle of honour.
An expert on Janáček’s works, musicologist Jiří Zahrádka:
When Janáček fell in love, the whole Brno knew about it
What does Janáček’s legacy mean today, and not only in higher education? Not only this legacy of the musical genius and patron of the Brno Academy was the pretext for an interview with Jiří Zahrádka, a leading national expert on Janáček’s life and work. We talked about all that is left of the composer’s legacy today, how this legacy affects us not only at the JAMU but also in higher education in general. Leoš Janáček died on 12 August 1928 in Moravská Ostrava of pneumonia at the age of 74. The first decade of the existence of the young Czechoslovak Republic thus ended with the passing of an extraordinary artist who was born under the rule of the monarchy, but was very much concerned about the establishment of an independent state as well as the establishment of the Brno College of Music throughout his life. The great Russophile eventually lived to see an independent art school. After the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, the sixty-five-year-old Janáček immediately realised that the new political situation made it possible to establish a music conservatory in Brno. Since its foundation in 1947, the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts has proudly borne the patronymic of this genius in its coat of arms.
Is Janáček still alive in the Czech Republic ninety years after his death?
Understandably, for two reasons. Firstly, we are still living off his achievements today – for example, without Janáček’s lifelong work, Brno’s music education would have developed later and would probably look much more modest today. But the main thing is, of course, Janáček’s work. It seems to me that finally, almost 100 years after the composer’s death, everyone has realised that we are dealing with the work of one of the world’s most important composers, and not only of the 20th century. In Brno, this is evidenced, for example, by the Janáček Brno Festival, which traditionally attracts many foreign visitors, or by the recent entry of the Leoš Janáček Archive of the Moravian Museum into the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.