Small in stature, but a towering figure in artistic and intellectual terms. A strong personality in the three stages of his professional development, which was firmly based on music in all its forms. This was already evident in his childhood when, with youthful enthusiasm, he explored his own potential as a performer and then as a composer. He evaluated the musical past and judged the present, bringing to it a new impetus to be found whenever he heard an authentic tone. He was not a follower but an innovator; until the end of his life he was searching for meaning in musical composition in his own way, which places him amongst the greatest composers of progressive music.
The foundation of Janáček’s work is vocal-instrumental music – particularly his operas (from Jenůfa to his final opera From the House of the Dead), cantatas (Amarus, The Eternal Gospel, The Fiddler’s Child, Glagolitic Mass), male, female and mixed choruses (particularly to texts by Petr Bezruč), instrumental compositions (Sinfonietta, Taras Bulba, Lachian Dances), chamber music for various combinations of instruments (not only the two string quartets) and compositions for solo instruments, especially the piano. The list would not be complete without a mention of the composer’s work inspired by his folklore research, as well as his unusual literary output (feuilletons) and theoretical pedagogy.
His body of work, though not particularly large, contains the extraordinary vitality of a man who, through his own initiative, was able to further the development of many different facets of music in his time. Teacher, choirmaster, organist, folklorist, composer and theoretician, music critic and commentator, librettist and feuilletonist. A passionate rambler through the countryside and through the melodic landscape of human speech. What we should look for in Janáček’s legacy is not lyricism or music on an epic scale, but rather profound moments of drama crammed into the five lines of the stave.
