And why should the toilsome tread of a beetle not awaken at least a compositional smile, or butterfly kisses at least a tonal longing?” – Leoš Janáček[1]
Leoš Janáček in 1882 – Copyright: Moravian Museum
Leoš Janáček was born on July 3, 1854, in the village of Hukvaldy, situated in northern Moravia near the Polish border. He was the ninth of teacher Jiří Janáček and his wife Amálie’s fourteen children. In recollections of his childhood, Janáček was fascinated by nature and music, including memories of his father's beehives, the Babí hora hill and the church gallery where he sang at ceremonial Masses. This picturesque, secluded locale was inhabited by peasants who spoke Lachian, a language combining elements of Czech and Polish. “The silence falls from each tree to the ground,” Janáček wrote of Hukvaldy fondly.[2]
Center of Hukvaldy – Photo: Petr Dadák
The Hukvaldy Castle
Janáček got his early musical education from his father and was a chorister at an Augustine monastery near the city of Brno, which taught talented children for free. It is possible that Janáček’s love of folk music was cultivated here by Father Pavel Krizkovsky, who was passionate about the local Moravian folk music. Later, Janáček attended the Teachers’ Training College at Brno, and the Prague Organ School—a four year program that Janáček completed in a single year. In 1881, following brief studies at the Leipzig and Vienna conservatories, Janáček returned home and settled in Brno to start his own music conservatory.
Postcard from Brno featuring Janáček, date unknown – Copyright: Moravian Museum
In Brno, Janáček began to compose operatic works. Inspired by his experience reviewing operas for the music journal Hudební listy, Janáček wrote operas that pulled directly from the Czech folk stories and music that he heard in his childhood. Unfortunately, his early output was not highly regarded; Šárka (1887), his first opera, would not be performed until 1925, nearly four decades after he completed the work, and his fourth, Osud (1904), was declared un-performable. His third opera, Jenůfa, triumphed at the Brno premiere and went on to premiere at the Prague National Theater over a decade later. This 1916 Prague performance of Jenůfa positioned Janáček as a composer of international acclaim, thanks in part to a publishing contract with Universal Edition in Vienna.
At the core of Janáček’s compositional practice was a love of his country. Opera, with its blend of prose, music, and drama, became a vehicle for Janáček’s musical patriotism. At the time, Germanic composers and artists dominated the musical landscape; even great Czech composers such as Smetana and Dvořák felt compelled to lean into the emergent opera standards coming from Germany. Janáček’s instead turned to his love of local folk song, and fostered a sense of nationalism in his emergent style. Janáček's interest in folk culture can be seen through A Bouquet of Moravian Folksongs, which was published in 1890:
The Bouquet of Slavonic Folk Songs, Op. 43, B. 76: Sorrow - Hradec Kralove Male Choir Bonifantes
Folk influences, especially references to the Czech language, became apparent in the compositions Janáček wrote at the time, such as Lachian Dances, Folk Dances in Moravia, The Little Queens and the ballet Rákoš Rákoczy.
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra - Lachian Dances for orchestra JW 6/17 (1888-91 rev. 1925)
Brno Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra - Rákos Rákoczy (Dances from Valašsko): Ballet in One Act - Blessed
Janacek’s folk influences did not prevent him from imagining fantastic futures in his operas. Janáček’s sci-fi inspired 1920 opera The Excursions of Mr. Brouček, brings audience to the moon, while another of his operas, the time-bending The Makropulos Case, features a main character who lives for hundreds of years thanks to a magic formula. Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen further expanded the stories opera could tell.
“Liška Bystrouška v divadle” (Vixen Sharp-Ears and the Theatre) - Stanislav Lolek, 1920
Janáček derived his inspiration for The Cunning Little Vixen from a serialized newspaper story, Liška Bystrouška, accompanied by illustrations, chronicling the escapades of a cunning fox cub. Captured by the local Forester, The Vixen grows up on his farm before ultimately breaking free to return to the wilderness and establish her own family. Janáček, who penned his own libretto, delves deep into the intricate relationships between humanity and the animal kingdom, as well as the perpetual cycle of life and death.
“Liška Bystrouška” - Lidové Noviny, 17 April 1920
In place of kings and tragic heroines, this opera features foxes, badgers, dogs, chickens, and frogs, each playing significant roles—a few humans make cameo appearances. Through the animals’ journeys, they weave a gentle cautionary tale, brimming with charm, moments of fear, tragedy, and ultimately, a celebration of life.
I captured the cunning little vixen for the forest and for the sorrow of one's final years. A merry thing with a sad ending, and I too am standing at that sad end.” – Leoš Janáček[3]
Leoš Janáček in 1926 – Copyright: Moravian Museum
In The Cunning Little Vixen, premiered in 1924, Janáček toes the line between realism and fantasy: while composers had reflected the sounds of nature in their work for centuries, from Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf to Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, Janáček went further and gave the animals themselves a voice. What at first is obvious—this is an opera featuring singing animals, after all—becomes more nuanced when we listen closer to how the emotions and lives are sung by those animals.
The musical qualities of animals were part of Janáček’s soundworld from an early age. Hukvaldy, his hometown, was an important source of his personal and stylistic development, and elements of the area’s folk music and its animal corollaries stayed with him throughout his life. Leaving his hometown in 1902, he remarked to his daughter Olga that an owl in a nearby tree “moaned with a wistful, hollow voice its nocturno to say goodbye.”[4] The lilt and dynamics of the bumblebee’s flight can be heard in his 1911 feuilleton Píseň, as well as serving as a metaphor in Janáček’s inauguration of the Brno Conservatory. In 1919, as the school opened, Janáček advised to the gathered crowed that the bee’s “sustained tone, constant and unvarying, suggests to us an eager search, a sharp mind, and a consciousness full of impressions lived through and remembered.”[5]
Shall I recruit even you, my little bee, into the Conservatory?” asked Janáček on launch day.[6]
A young audience at Brno Conservatory, date unknown – Copyright: Moravian Museum
He also incorporated the sounds of fauna around him into his works. Robins, whose melodies and improvisations suggest compositional techniques, were an inspiration to the composer. “Janáček declares his wish for such composers who compose out of the very necessity of their being, who can fill the skies with explosions of sound, but also those who know the value of—silence.”[7]
In The Cunning Little Vixen, Janáček presents not only his depiction of interspecies relationships, but the larger natural cycle of life. The opera concludes with The Forester surrounded by The Vixen and other animals that have joined him on his journey of self-discovery, yet the final word belongs to The Frog, which may strike some audiences as odd, even anti-climactic!
Lillian Fellows as The Frog in Detroit Opera’s production of The Cunning Little Vixen
German translator Max Brod, concerned that the opera’s conclusion did not have the appropriate weightiness, wrote to Janáček, “I would like to ask you to compose [music for] some words of The Forester for the last page of the vocal score, with which he could sink into rumination. To end with the Frog is impossible.” From Brno, Janáček replied, “Surely it’s charming when the little Frog ends it! The music is absolutely made for it. And it is original—and the merry-go-round of life thereby truthfully and faithfully depicted!”[8] Janáček convinced Brod that his conclusion may not have had the pomp and circumstance of an operatic finale, but instead is closer to the ever-shifting cycles of life that continue on with little fanfare.
Through this unconventional lens, Janáček captures the essence of life's cyclical nature, celebrating its joys and acknowledging its sorrows. In embracing this unconventional finale, Janáček crafts a timeless reflection on the enduring beauty and complexity of the natural world, where even the smallest creatures hold significance in the grand tapestry of life.
Mané Galoyan (The Vixen) and Alex Rosen (The Badger) in rehearsal for Detroit Opera’s The Cunning Little Vixen
- Austin Richey, Ph.D, Digital Media Manager and Storyteller at Detroit Opera
Footnotes
[1] Michael Beckerman, “‘Janacek On Naturalism’ (1924-1925),” Janácek and His World, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2003, 287–306, 287.
[2] Ray Ellsworth, “Leos Janacek,” Musical America, January 1963.
[3] A letter from Leoš Janáček to Kamila Stösslová, April 3, 1923.
[4] Tiina Vainiomäki, The Musical Realism of Leoš Janáček From Speech Melodies to a Theory of Composition, University of Finland, 2012, 181
[5] Michael Beckerman and Glen Bauer, eds., Janácek and Czech Music: Proceedings of the International Conference (Saint Louis, 1988), 1988, 112.
[6] Vainiomäki, The Musical Realism of Leoš, 18.
[7] Vilem Tausky ed., Leoš Janáček: Leaves from his Life, Kahn & Averill, London, 1982, 46-49.
[8] John Tyrrell, Janácek's Operas: A Documentary Account, Princeton University Press, 2014, 299-300.
