THE OPERAS OF LEOS Janáček

by

ERIK CHISHOLM, MUS. DOC. (EDIN.)

Dvořák MEDALLIST OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC

Originally published by PERGAMON PRESS

First edition 1971

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 68-22491
08 012853 X (flexicover)
08 012854 8 (hard cover)

CONTENTS

Foreword

Editorial Note

Acknowledgement

Extract

Erik Chisholm: A Tribute

The OPERAS

1. The House of the Dead

2. The Makropulos Case

3. Sharp-Ears-The Cunning Little Vixen

4. Kátja Kabanová

5. The Excursions of Mr. Brouček

6. Jenůfa

7. Other Operas of Janáček

APPENDIX

PHOTO GALLERY

Erik Chisholm Web page

FOREWORD

IN 1947 I sat with my young student wife in the gallery of the National Theatre in Prague, listening for the first time to a Janáček opera. It was Kátja  Kabanová, conducted by that greatest of Czech conductors, Václav Talich, with whom I was studying at that time, and the cast included several famous Czech singers, such as Beno Blachut, Marta Krasová and Ludmila Čerzinková.

What a revelation this performance was to me! Here was a composer whose very name I hardly knew, who had been dead 20 years, writing an opera in an entirely different idiom from anything I had ever known, who used the human voice and the inflexions of his strange sounding language in an absolutely original way, and whose instrumentation and harmony produced colours and sounds unlike anything I had heard before. We were so impressed with Kátja  Kabanová that we determined to see every possible Janáček opera while we were in Czechoslovakia. So shortly after the war German composers were not popular, and there was an astonishing wealth of Czechoslovak music to be heard; in fact the selection was greater than it is today. We saw nearly all the Janáček operas during that year, sometimes travelling to other towns to see them in several different productions.

With every hearing, my admiration for the genius of Janáček grew. I took vocal scores of several operas of this virtually unknown composer back to London in 1948, and was fortunate in being able to interest Norman Tucker of Sadler’s Wells in Janáček’s work. Of course, these piano scores gave little idea of what Janáček’s orchestration sounds like, and even one’s ecstatic descriptions of Janáček’s operas as "a sort of mixture between Mussorgsky, Bartók, Debussy, Sibelius and Mahler" could not create even to the expert mind much idea of the actual sound of a Janáček score. Not that Janáček was particularly "advanced "in his methods of composition-after all, Schoenberg had written Pierrot Lunaire before Janáček’s Kátja -but he had the knack of expressing absolutely new ideas with apparently conventional means. I managed to secure a tape of Kátja through the B.B.C., and during a playback gave a sort of running commentary to Norman Tucker and Desmond Shaw-Taylor, who had heard a lot about Janáček, but very little of his actual music! They were as enthusiastic as I had always been, and the first English performance of a Janáček opera was given on April 10, 1951 at Sadler’s Wells (Kátja  Kabanová).

There has seldom been a time since when a Janáček opera has not been in the Wells repertory; Rafael Kubelik also brought Jenůfa to Covent Garden during his time as Musical Director there, and in more recent years some American companies have taken the plunge. In Germany there have been pretty regular productions of Janáček, and in the last few years there have been magnificent productions in Sweden, France, Italy and even South America.

Janáček could now bc said to have "arrived" outside his own native land, and there is sufficient interest in the purely operatic side of his output to make Erik Chisholm’s book not only welcome but positively overdue. Dr. Chisholm was a fanatical propagandist for a greater appreciation of Janáček’s art and no-one could have been better qualified than he to write the first comprehensive analysis of Janáček’s operas in the English language, indeed one of the few books on this subject in any language.

Dr. Chisholm’s rather unusual idea of commencing his analytical essays with Janáček’s last opera and working back to his earlier ones seems particularly appropriate in this case, with Janáček’s very unusual musical background and development as an operatic composer, so that we plunge straight into his most mature work. It was also a splendid idea on Dr. Chisholm’s part to write a complete thematic analysis of at least one scene from a Janáček opera, in the Appendix, so that the reader can follow the development and transformation of every small thematic organism, watch the composer’s methods as it were under a microscope, and see how these methods lie at the very core of Janáček’s operatic thinking.

I am quite sure that all lovers of Janáček will find this book an essential part of their library, and I hope that it will also awaken the interest of many more who do not yet know the work of this most fascinating of opera composers.

CHARLES MACKERRAS

EDITORIAL NOTE

THE problem of transliteration always arises in dealing with languages using many letters or symbols not found in English. Here I have taken expert advice and retained the original Czech form of names, some of which, e.g. Petrovič (pronounced Petrovitch, the č sound being familiar to most readers here) or Lujza (Louise), are obvious, while unfamiliar ones like Jan z Rokycan (John of Rokycan) and Matĕj (Matthew) are translated in footnotes where they first appear. The name Kátja  I have taken from the score, although in Czech it can be written as either Kát'a or Kátă, but I revert to Kristina because the Krista and Christa of the score are, I think, adopted to save space; she is actually addressed in the text as Kristina.

Vec Makropulos is usually translated The Makropulos Affair, "affair" having a wider significance than "case", but as it was an actual legal case in the story, I have adhered to Dr. Chisholm’s title, which was also used by Sadler’s Wells. Dostoevsky’s novel, in Czech Z mrtveho domu (From the House of the Dead), was used exactly by Janáček for his opera, but is often quoted without the "From", and here I have retained Dr. Chisholm’s choice which often reads more easily in a discursive text.

Czech inverted commas, as often in German, are thus: ,,Nemám psa", and exclamation marks precede as well as follow a phrase thus:¡ ... ! I have used the English simpler method. Incidentally, as Miss Margaret Cox points out, the above two-word sentence typifies the Czech characteristic of brevity. Nemám psa means in colloquial English "I have not got a dog"-in our shortest form it would be "I have no dog". This characteristic poses problems for those translating Czech libretti into English (or German) for singing; Norman Tucker has proved himself an adept at the task.

His evocative references to orchestral effects come straight from the professor rather than from the pedagogue -for instance, the "ostinato chuckling figure ", "violins screaming at the top "or a certain "theme gnawing away in the lower octave", likewise the "shimmering triplets "and the reference to the idiotic "tidli-tidli figure". And such homely phrases as "amorous goings-on" and "he makes a pass at her" constantly remind us of Erik the down-to-earth human, the man of humour whose delightful précis of the Osud story is quoted on page 359.

The sad fact that Dr. Chisholm’s sudden death robbed him of an author’s opportunity for a final revision of his book has imposed heavy responsibility on myself as his editor. Many a time while scanning these pages I have longed for his personal clarification or instructions. The 263 musical quotations, all sketched in his own hurried hand and often with barely decipherable alterations or annotations, sometimes even with a misplaced numbering, called not only for reference to vocal scores but also for help from musicians with practical knowledge of the music. The help was readily given by Charles Mackerras, who knows it as both Czech scholar and as a practical opera conductor, also from his colleague David Lloyd-Jones. To both of them I am immensely grateful, especially to Mr. Mackerras for his Foreword.

I wish also to acknowledge the fine professional work of Mr. Jack Lugg who, in preparing all these music quotations for the press, discovered he had undertaken a task more demanding in time and patience than even the transcription of a complete manuscript symphony by one of our least legible composers!

Miss Margaret Cox, an expert in the Czech language and unusually knowledgeable on Czech music, has given invaluable help by going through not only the music and its accompanying lines of text, but also the proofs. I am very grateful for her enthusiasm.

In a work of this kind there is always the problem of style. A writer who indulges perhaps in no other musical activity develops a characteristic literary style. Erik Chisholm was a man of immense enthusiasms, white-hot convictions, and tremendous energy. A book like this had to be squeezed in between his lecturing, conducting, administration, and composing. For him it was more important to pour out this information as though he were speaking it to his students, to you and to me: in fact much of it was dictated. He had no chance to polish it, to weigh up the niceties of delicately balanced phrases. I often wonder if he did this with a subconscious knowledge that they would be his last lines spoken on this earth, as indeed they almost proved to be.

Knowing him as I did, I can hear his Scots voice speaking the text, with his homely but striking allusions, colloquial phrases, and always with humour and humanity peeping through. Therefore I have in the main left his copy as he sent it, making such slight changes here and there as I felt he would have made had he lived to see his proofs -adjustments in words to avoid duplication, corrections to obvious slips in his hurried quotations from the published scores. Those from the early opera Osud he must have noted in Brno; I have been unable to find a single copy.

I therefore ask the indulgence of those readers who may find inaccuracies, which, if substantiated, will be adjusted in later reprints; I trust they will not be serious. Dr. Chisholm has minutely analysed Janáček’s scores in the technique he learned with Sir Donald Francis Tovey. As an opera composer and conductor his analyses are unusually perceptive, even though some may occasionally find them pedantic. He believed that the present growing appreciation of these operas justified such treatment, and he died hoping, as does the Publisher, that this may prove to be a valuable reference book for many years to come.

K. W.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I WISH gratefully to acknowledge the assistance given me in analysing the original Czech texts of the operas by Dr. Miroslav Michl, a graduate of Prague University and an authority on Czech dialects. Dr. Michl, who came to Cape Town in 1947, has collaborated with me in this textual work over a number of years and I fully acknowledge that thanks to his expert knowledge and advice any understanding of the Czech language, and in particular of the characteristic Janáček speech curves, which this work may disclose is entirely due to Dr. Michl.

EXTRACT

Don’t look in dramatic music only for melodies-opera must be of the stuff of which real life is made.

For many years, I have been on the track of the musical sounds of Czech words: they are not to be found just in harmony, in chords-I know that the well is much deeper. The happy, carefree chatter of a child, the undercurrent of passion in the speech of a young woman, the clipt, manly tones of a successful business-man, I recognize them all.

In Fate I captured the melodious expression of a child, in Jenůfa I managed to express the mental torture of Kostelnitcka and Jenůfa, I followed the imaginative flight of Mr. Brouček into celestial space, in Kátja  Kabanová I tried to delineate the different characters and in Sharp-Ears I wedded my muse to the shadow of a forest and the miracle of dawn.

For my modern historical opera, The Makropulos Case, I had to dig into a dried-up well.

My Šárka?

At the time when I wrote it, everything was so new to me: a passionate introduction, the dark shades of a primeval forest with the aroma of moss and fern.

The Beginning of a Romance was an empty comedy and I felt it was not in the best of taste to introduce into this artificial atmosphere splendid Czech folk-songs.

Every one of my operas grew a long time in my mind before I put pen to paper-of that you can be certain.

Leos Janáček

ERIK CHISHOLM: A TRIBUTE

MODERN transport has transformed the world. Conductor, politician, journalist, tycoon may with ease and within a matter of hours span the globe. They can be in Quebec one day, Yokohama the next, and back home in London the day after that. We are as conscious of them as if they had never left us. Never before could the term "ubiquitous" be so easily justified.

It is not so, however, with those who deliberately go to a far country to devote themselves to their art or their science there. However nobly they strive, with never so remarkable results, only a faint ripple of their work reaches home. A news item, perhaps, now and then. But in spite of today’s facile communication, the old saying "out of sight, out of mind" is unfortunately still true.

It certainly applied to the late Dr. Erik Chisholm, despite an occasional trip to his native Scotland or to carry out high-speed research somewhere in central Europe. On one of those rare visits, he was able to attend the formal opening of the Commonwealth and International Library of the Pergamon Press in Oxford in 1963. He was occupying a sabbatical year (probably the only one of his life) by composing a full-length opera, attending and speaking at a learned Conference or two, orchestrating a few dozen songs by a fellow Scot, arranging another volume of sixty Scottish folk-songs for publication in the U.S.S.R., and other trifling activities of the kind. It was then, too, that the Pergamon Press, knowing his enthusiasm for Janáček, commissioned him to write the present volume. He eagerly accepted. Two years went by. He was back at his double post in Cape Town. Then we heard he was in Moscow. Thither we cabled that if we did not receive his manuscripts in double quick time, we’d.... Well, the next we knew was that he had completed it. One summer morning in 1965 a fat parcel arrived on my desk. In it was this present book, each chapter neatly cross-tied with blue ribbon, and a fulsome apology typed on the familiar university blue notepaper adorned, as always, with barely legible hieroglyphics from the master’s own hand.

Within a few days I opened the Daily Telegraph. There, without warning, was his obituary notice. It was unbelievable. I was stunned. He had had such a zest for life.

Since then I have discovered that owing to his long absence in South Africa, and before that on active service in the war, many musicians, especially of the younger generation, know nothing of Erik Chisholm. I have therefore obtained the permission of the journal of the Composers’ Guild, The Composer, to reproduce here an article I wrote in October 1965, as a tribute to a remarkable man.

If ever a man deserved the epithet "human dynamo" it was Erik Chisholm. Seldom has any musician been so generously gifted for creation, execution and administration as he; even rarer it is to find one, so versatile in his gifts, so prodigiously generous in the dispensing of them.

Born in Glasgow on 4 January, 1904, Erik was a delicate child; for this reason he left Queen’s Park School at the early age of 13. He had always shown musical talent as a boy, composing songs and keyboard pieces some of which were published. He was studying piano with Pouishnoff, and organ with Herbert Walton; by the time he was 12 he was giving organ recitals including an important one in Hull. In 1924 he went to Canada where he was organist and choir master at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, Nova Scotia, as well as Director of Music at Pictou Academy. On his return to Glasgow two years later, as organist of the Barony Church he was the first to give a complete performance of Karg-Elert’s 66 Choral Variations, in three recitals. This was typical of his active enthusiasm for fellow composers’ work, often at the sacrifice of opportunities for his own music, and always using his strength almost to the point of exhaustion.

This enthusiasm led him to found the Active Society for the Propagation of Contemporary Music, 1929, which was indeed "active" for ten years and responsible for more than 200 first performances in Great Britain, inviting many of our own leading composers to perform their works, and personalities like Hindemith, Szymanovski, Bartók, and Casella; also Sorabji who gave what is still probably the only public performance to date of his Opus Clavicembalisticum and Fourth Piano Sonata. He also revived the Dunedin Association, formed thirty years earlier by Andrew Lang and Hamish McCunn, and formed the Scottish Ballet Society (1928). Realizing that in spite of his immense practical musicianship he needed academic "sanction", he obtained from Professor E. J. Dent and Donald Tovey written assurances of their complete confidence in him, which admitted him to Edinburgh University, a rare privilege for a student possessing none of the usual certificates and diplomas. There he obtained his Mus.B. in 1931 and his Mus.D. three years later.

He lectured well, researched diligently into such subjects as Gaelic music, and was music critic for the Glasgow Weekly Herald and Scottish Daily Express from 1930 to 1934. But his most memorable activity was with the Glasgow Grand Opera Society which afforded many of us the first opportunity to become acquainted with works such as Berlioz’s Les Troyens, given on two consecutive evenings, but also as a double dose on Saturday afternoon and evening for the sake of the numerous critics and musical cognoscenti who must have thus contributed nobly to the finances of the then L.M.S. Region of British Railways.

All these years Erik was busy teaching, playing, conducting and composing. His first piano concerto was performed in the Amsterdam Festival of 1933 and he began writing operas in 1935. As musical director of the Celtic Ballet (founded by Margaret Morris), which he joined in 1938, he wrote four ballets.

The war disrupted all these activities. His physical grade was four-much to his disgust-so he sought ways to contribute to the morale alike of civilians and Forces. Thus in 1940 he joined the Carl Rosa Company as one of its conductors, and a year later became conductor and musical director of the Anglo-Polish Ballet Company which he toured Italy for ENSA in 1943. Perhaps his most remarkable achievements, possible only to a musician of such practical dynamism, were as Musical Director for ENSA to the South-East Asia Command from 1943 to 1945. In India he formed a multi-racial orchestra which gave many concerts. He also became extremely interested in Eastern Music (his Hindustani Piano Concerto reflects that interest). Erik’s violent enthusiasm, which always made him such a stimulating colleague and so effective in whatever field he happened to be working, sometimes brought him in head-on collisions with his fellows. Such a collision occurred with his equally forceful chief, none other than Col. Jack Hawkins. The clash was fortunate in that it removed Erik to Singapore, where many thousands of P.O.W.s were anxiously awaiting repatriation and the return home. Here Erik formed the ENSA Singapore Symphony Orchestra-truly cosmopolitan, of fifteen nationalities from East and West-with which he gave over fifty concerts. With these, and lectures and playing, he brought fresh interest and hope to the bored men, who used to queue in the early morning for his evening concerts.

From there he travelled in 1946 straight to Cape Town, where he had already been appointed Professor of Music (later, Dean of the Faculty), and Director of the S.A. College of Music. His reorganization of the Departments, engagement of first-class professors of international repute, and introduction of degree courses never prevented his intense personal activities as lecturer, recitalist, and conductor; his Opera Group not only toured the Union but also visited Europe, and it is sad to reflect that he was to visit London in July 1965 to arrange a similar tour for the following spring (i.e. 1966). His active interest in Czech music had brought him the Dvořák Medal in 1956, a most unusual honour which pleased him greatly. It is sad to think that he was not to see the publication of this present book.

There is no space here to list his own music; the last of his ten operas (based on The Importance of Being Earnest) is dedicated to Sir Jack Westrup. His end came suddenly, but there had been signs of excessive tiredness during the past twelve months. Overworked, and worried by the apartheid which so long had not affected his professional classes, but now began insidiously to affect his activities, he was ordered in March this year to rest for three months. After only a month he was back in his office, as usual, from 8.30 a.m. until late evening. He was full of plans for sailing on 18th June for England, where the eldest of his three daughters, Morag, a doctor, could have ensured his rest and treatment. But it was too late; while the ambulance was on its way to take him to hospital, he slipped away-so unlike his turbulent, unruly life. He is sorely missed. Music rarely has had so utterly devoted a servant, so tireless a practitioner, as Erik Chisholm. He literally gave his life to, and for, music.

KEN WRIGHT

INTRODUCTION

I ASK readers to forgive me for beginning this series of essays with an excerpt from my diary of 11 November 1958.

*******************

Brno, part of the former province of Moravia, supports a symphony orchestra of 114 players and has had a permanent national opera since 1881: there are at least ten other opera-houses in Czechoslovakia.

Leos Janáček is the big musical figure in the history of Brno and using the thirtieth anniversary of his death as a more or less reasonable excuse for holding a music festival in his honour, almost his entire works were performed there between the 12th and 30th October. To perform nine different operas and give eight different programmes of orchestral chamber and choral music within a three-week period was a tremendous undertaking and one which speaks volumes for the zeal, devotion, talent and resources of musicians and musical organizations in Brno. As support to the musical performances, there ran concurrently a fortnight’s International Conference of Music Theoreticians reading papers on and discussing every aspect of Janáček’s art.

The Czech Minister of Culture very kindly invited me to attend the Brno Janáček Festival. I flew from Cape Town to Brno, where along with other guests from many different countries, I stayed at Brno’s then top hotel, the Grand, during the period of the Festival. It was a most rewarding and, indeed, surprising experience: like many others with whom I spoke who attended this unique one-composer festival, I came away more than half convinced that as a 20th century opera composer, Janáček stands right at the top, along with Puccini and Richard Strauss. Yet, while the stars of Strauss and Puccini have long been shining brightly in the operatic firmament, that of Janáček is really only beginning to rise, at least so far as recognition of his genius is concerned out of his own country. After the last Prague Spring Festival (when the five greatest operas of Janáček were given), and now the complete works at Brno, I believe it can be reasonably expected that after thirty years of international neglect, these highly original and widely different operas may now begin to come into their own on the world’s operatic stages.

*******************

Since I wrote this, Sadler’s Wells has followed up its highly successful production of Kátja  Kabanová with performances of Vixen Sharp-Ears and The Makropulos Case. Jenůfa has, of course, been given at Covent Garden and in 1964 the Prague National Theatre performed at the Edinburgh Festival a series of Janáček operas which included the first British performances of The House of the Dead.

Leos Janáček was born on 3 July 1854, in Hukvaldy, near an ancient castle in the mountainous part of Silesia close to the Moravian border. His father, Jiří Janáček, an enthusiastic amateur musician, was schoolmaster in the village and noted for his tenacity, severity and hot temper-personal qualities which he handed down to his son. Leos was one of fourteen children.

As a boy of 11, he entered the Queen’s Monastery School in Brno as a chorister, working there for eight years under the inspiring direction of Pavel Křížkovský, a highly talented conductor and composer.

Nicknamed "Blue Boys", these young musicians were given an exceptionally extensive practical musical education: in addition to singing choral works of the very highest order, they were formed into an orchestra, performing professional standard repertoire works like Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony and the Coriolan Overture. They even ventured into the operatic field producing Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Magic Flute, Auber’s Fra Diavolo and other operas.

When, in 1873, Křížkovský was appointed choirmaster to the Cathedral of Olomouc, Janáček partly took over his post at Brno. Feeling the necessity for further study, however, he relinquished this appointment after a year, and first enrolled as a student at the Prague Organ School (school of music) in 1871 where he was permitted to take the first two years of the course simultaneously-then a few years later had two further study periods in Leipzig and Vienna (1879-80).

Janáček has told how, as a poverty-stricken student in Prague, he learned to play Bach’s forty-eight Preludes and Fugues by drawing with a piece of chalk on a table a piano keyboard.

After his Prague studies, Janáček returned to Brno where he taught music and conducted the Brno Philharmonic Society. His first teaching experiences were anything but happy, for he found teaching unmusical pupils a drudgery-a torture: nor as a choirmaster was he noted for his patience and tolerance-if anyone sang a wrong note he would pounce on them with baton and pencil and belabour their unfortunate heads.

As a composition student Janáček had to write certain exercises and when he had choirs under his direction he wrote choral works for them. His first instrumental composition was a Suite for string orchestra in six movements in which the influence of Wagner and Smetana may be seen.

It was at this time that a friendship sprang up between the immature Janáček and the mature Dvořák. While a student in Prague, he had attended a concert at which that other great Czech composer, Smetana, was present: after a performance of one of Smetana’s works there was a tremendous outburst of applause-heard by everyone in the concert hall except the great Czech composer himself: this was in 1874 - the fateful year when Smetana was smitten with incurable deafness. Janáček, however, was never so great an admirer of Smetana’s music as he was of Dvořák’s.

Janáček had fallen in love with one of his pupils, the daughter of the principal of the Brno Teachers’ Training College in which he was employed, and having ended his student days for good, and having made up his mind to settle in Brno, he married the 15-year-old Zdeňka Schulzová in 1881. The set of piano variations he wrote in Leipzig are subtitled "Zdeňka’s Variations".

In the same year as his marriage, Janáček was appointed director of the newly formed Brno School for the training of Moravian instrumentalists and composers, a project of which he had long dreamed: thereafter he was plunged into a tremendously full, extensive, active and stormy musical life as teacher, concert organizer, conductor, and composer.

An important event in Janáček’s life, and one which gave his own creative bent a new lead, was his collaboration with František Bartošek in collecting and editing Moravian folksongs.

Janáček’s domestic life took a tragic turn with the death of his son Vladimír in 1890 and his 21-year-old daughter Olga 13 years later: the Janáček marriage never really recovered from these tragedies and, as the years passed, husband and wife drifted further apart.

With the establishment of a Czech theatre in Brno, Janáček began thinking in terms of the theatre and in 1887 had composed his first opera Šárka. He resigned his appointment at the Teachers’ Training College in 1904 to allow himself time for composition. The record of Janáček’s life from that time forward until his death at the age of 74 is mainly an account of his many compositions-orchestral and choral works, chamber music and opera, and their performances.

It is chiefly as an opera composer that Janáček has gained an international reputation, and it is these operas, their history and content, which is the subject of the present series of essays.

June 1965

E. C.

 

 

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