Janacek

by John Tyrrell

John Tyrrell's biography of the Leos Jancek is the culmination of a life's work in the field. It stands upon his existing documentary studies of Jancek's operas and translations of other key sources and his examination of thousands of still unpublished letters and other documents in the Jancek archive in Brno. Altogether it provides the most detailed account of Jancek's life in any language and offers new views of Jancek as composer, writer, thinker and human being. Volume 1, which goes up to the outbreak of the First World War and Jancek's sixtieth birthday in the summer of 1914, consists of chronological chapters providing a straightforward account of Jancek's life year by year and another forty contextual chapters. Topics include on-going sequences ('Music as autobiography I', etc.; 'Jancek's knowledge of opera I', etc.) and individual chapters on Jancek as a teacher, as a theorist, as an music ethnographer, on his speech-melody theory, his relationship to particularly influential operas (Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, Charpentier's Louise), on his mentors (such as Antonn Dvork) and his btes noires (such as Karel Kovarovic). A particular feature are the specially commissioned chapters on Jancek's health by Dr Stephen Lock (one of the editors of the Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine, OUP 1994 and 2001, editor of the British Medical Journal, 1975-91, and a Jancek enthusiast since the early postwar broadasts on the Third Programme), and on Jancek's earnings and finances by Dr Jir Zahrdka (curator of the Jancek archive in Brno, and editor of authentic editions of Srka and The Excursions of Mr Broucek).

800 pages, Hardcover

First published January 2, 2006

Reviews

[Byron Raja · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read both volumes over the course of a month. I was surprised at the surplus of information regarding Janacek’s life and I was amazed at the quality and general impartiality of the writing 10/10