The seven songs known as the Gypsy Melodies were composed at the start of 1880. Antonín Dvořák based them on a German translation of poems by Adolf Heyduk, which he himself translated. The songs were written for and dedicated to Gustav Walter, a tenor at Vienna’s Hofoper, who premiered them in Vienna the following year. The fourth song, “When my old mother…”, was particularly popular and is often arranged for different instruments.

Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs is a set of “stylized accompaniments” to Moravian folk songs; the collection of 174 songs was first published as a Bouquet of Moravian Folk Songs (1890), thanks to the efforts of the philologist and ethnographer František Bartoš and Leoš Janáček. From this extensive anthology of Moravian folk songs the composer gradually chose the “53 most beautiful songs”, and with his piano accompaniment he masterfully revealed the foundations from which the songs develop in harmony with the text, melody, rhythm, form and tonal feelings.

“From the Pen of a Self-Taught Man” was the subtitle of the poems/memoirs which the Lidové noviny newspaper published in 1916. Not even Janáček guessed that their author was a man whose literary works he could read in his favourite newspaper or might even have on his bookshelf at home. Some eighty years later the identity of the poems’ author was revealed: the Wallachian writer Josef (Ozef) Kalda had played a little trick – he had sent an unsigned manuscript to Lidové noviny, which was immediately published, and a year later Janáček took these beautiful verses about gypsy love to Luhačovice, where he created the first motifs for this musical novel. The Diary of One Who Disappeared is a cycle of 22 songs which Janáček finished composing in 1920, and in the spring of the following year it was premiered at the Reduta theatre. The work quickly became a worldwide phenomenon.

Eva Drlíková