Leos Janácek is recognized today as one of Czechoslovakia's greatest composers. Yet a superficial study of his life reveals that he was never recognized as a composer of stature during most of his lifetime. Not until the successful 1918 performance of his opera Jenufa in Vienna did Janácek receive international notice. Thus, Janácek was an elderly man aged sixty-four years at the time of his first major success as a composer! His reputation was so isolated even after the Vienna performances, that Janácek was ignored in other parts of the world. Upon the opening of Jenufa at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1924, Janácek was still referred to as an amateur composer. From the review of Jenufa in the New York Evening Post, "Janácek has written music that is obviously the work of a man who, however many works he may have to his credit, is only a cut above the amateur."
His slighted reputation did not always fare well in his native Czechoslovakia either. Rudolf Firkusný, a former pupil of Janácek's, noted that the composer "was considered partly crazy, partly extravagant, and an amateur. [Prague] didn't take him seriously...." Despite such criticism both in his native country and abroad, Janácek's compositions have since emerged to general recognition for artistic merit. For the last ten years of his life, Janácek lived as a self-supported composer.
For most of the first 64 years of Janácek's life, he did compose music--much music, in fact. But his livelihood was certainly not sustained by his compositional endeavors. Indeed, from the age of 18 until he turned 64 years old, Janácek's profession was as a music teacher. While his lifetime ambition remained with composition, his career was in education. To suggest that Janácek's career as a teacher was a decision out of necessity rather than choice is misleading, however. Investigating his vocational life's work reveals that Janácek aspired toward teaching and excelled at it, as well. Would his teaching career have been cut short had his compositional success arrived earlier in his life? That question will be investigated.
Leos Janácek's initial professional endeavor in teaching seemed to follow course with his family's legacy of teacher-musicians. Both his father and grandfather served as school teachers and church choir directors in their home villages.
Janácek's grandfather, Jirí, began his teaching career at the age of nineteen in Velký Petrvald. Extant accounts confirm that Jirí was a good teacher, but teaching was not a glamorous profession--his normal duties as a village school master would also include wood-chopping, cleaning, supervising children, and ringing church bells! Jirí also possessed reasonable skill as an organist and singer, and with such talents, he provided musical service to the town's church choir.
Two of Jirí's sons followed similar career paths, including Leos' father, also named Jirí. The father's teaching career began even sooner in life than the grandfather's, at the age of sixteen, when Jirí was appointed school assistant in the town Neplachovice (1831). Two years later, he served briefly as assistant teacher in Katerinky, then moved onto Príbor where he taught for fourteen years. With such experience Jirí secured a full-time schoolmaster position in the village of Hukvaldy (1848), where Leos would be born six years later. Jirí established himself in Hukvaldy not only as village school master, but in civic matters, as well. His reputation as a teacher was strong, and served as a church musician both in the village and a neighboring town.
Life as a school teacher in 19th century Hukvaldy was a constant struggle. As a small village, the Hukvaldy teacher lived a bare existence, and Jirí struggled to keep his family within basic living conditions. His salary was meager and working conditions were unhealthy. Hukvaldy's one-room classroom held all of the village students within a cramped space; Jirí taught half the class, while an assistant taught the other.
Despite the poor living conditions that would eventually contribute to Jirí Janácek's death in 1866, he did establish a successful singing and reading club in Hukvaldy. He also founded an amateur music society which soon boasted of several concert performances within a single year.
Leos Janácek was born on July 3, 1854, in the Hukvaldy school house!
While his family was poor, Leos did live in a very musical home. As he related
to a newspaper reporter in 1928, "It was certainly not by chance that I became a
musician: my entire surroundings!... I simply had it in me from the cradle."
Likewise, his father insisted upon his early education "in order to prepare
himself properly for his teaching career." For the first ten years of his life,
Leos Janácek was educated by his father alone--both at home and at the village
school. At the age of eleven upon entering his next school, however, Leos'
father would no longer have a direct impact on the boy's life.
Janácek's formal training as a musician began in 1865 at the St.
Augustian monastery in Old Brno. At the age of eleven, the boy Leos
entered the monastery school in a program designed more for the training of
choristers than of scholars. Musical training composed the majority of studies
for the boys in the monastery--singing, piano, chamber and orchestral
rehearsals, and figured-bass theory. Few records survive from these early years
in Janácek's life, however, from his later accounts, Janácek reveals the
dreariness of his St. Augustian years:
"The
gloomy corridors, the old church, the gardens, my
poverty-stricken youth, my loneliness, my homesickness."
Despite the weary life Janácek experienced, his opportunity for a formal and musical education was remarkable. As a son of the village's poor school teacher, Janácek was indeed fortunate to receive an church sponsored education. Most villagers would never experience such care and comfort. In fact, his father--overcome by impoverished living--died midpoint of Janácek's second year at the school. Leos was able to continue in his studies through the secured scholarship he received upon entrance to the abbey. Both living costs and tuition were covered by this scholarship.
While his musical training was relatively thorough at St. Augustian's, Leos furthered his general studies at the Old Brno Junior Secondary School from 1866 to 1869. Until his voice changed in 1869, thus forcing him to leave the monastery's choir, Janácek actually studied both at St. Augustian's school and the junior high school.
After his father death, Janácek's most influential teacher was the rector of the
St. Augustian monastery, Pavel Krizkovsky. In a strange chain
of events, Janácek was placed in the care of his teacher, a situation that
Krizkovsky had experienced years before. At the age of eleven years, Krizkovsky
was brought to the village schoolmaster of Neplachovice by his unwed mother;
that teacher was Jirí Janácek, Leos' father! Jirí Janácek took in the boy,
giving him both general education and musical lessons. Under his guidance,
Krizkovsky received a music scholarship to a choral school, and later took the
Holy Orders of priesthood after graduating from Olomouc University. In 1843
Krizovsky was sent to Brno to both further his own education and serve as
principal of the Augustian school and choir.
Krizkovsky today is considered one of the co-founders of modern Czech national music. His work in Brno extended beyond that of a church school teacher and choir director. And just as Leos Janácek would serve years later, Krizkovsky served as a choral director to many amateur music clubs, and composed many significant, early Czech choral works.
Upon completion of studies at the Old Brno Junior High School in 1869, Janácek entered the Brno Imperial and Royal Teachers' Training Institute at the young age of fifteen. Despite the best efforts of general education at the junior high school, Janácek was faced with filling many gaps that were missing in his education missing from his monastery years. During the three-year course of study, Janácek especially excelled in Czech language and history. Upon final examination, he passed with particular distinction in music, history, geography, and psychology.
Janácek was made an assistant teacher at the Teachers' Institute upon graduation in 1872. There he practiced his teaching skills while also conducting the choirs at the St. Augustian monastery and the Svatopluk, a craftsmen's music society.
Aside from the Teachers' Institute and monastery work, the remainder of teaching opportunities for the aspiring Janácek was found in clubs such as the Svatopluk. These musical clubs or societies had played a unique role in Czech cultural life. Amateur singing clubs in the 19th Century flourished. Indeed, such organizations continued to help develop a Slovak musical culture into the first decades of the 20th Century.
Among all of these societies and clubs, the "Beseda" were among the most prosperous. The Beseda were actually social conversation clubs. Meetings typically included glee-club style sing-alongs. With the passage of time, however, these informal song groups developed into concert choirs. Janácek was appointed director of the Brno Beseda in 1876, and he worked quickly to improve its performance level. By 1882 he established a Beseda singing school, as well.
To expand his opportunities as a choir director, Janácek suddenly entered the Prague Organ School in 1874, leaving behind in Brno his handful of musical teaching posts and director positions. With his earlier musical education, Janácek was permitted to skip the first two years of course work and proceed immediately into third year studies. More importantly to his organ performance skills, the year Janácek spent in Prague exposed the aspiring teacher to a wide breadth of curricular courses. While other European conservatories of the 19th Century were operated to train orchestral musicians, the Prague Organ School was designed to train teachers as well as organists. Janácek's studies at the Organ School included harmony, counterpoint, imitation, improvisation, and aesthetics. With a hasty return to Brno after passing his examinations with distinction, Janácek returned to Brno and resumed his previous positions with the Teachers' Training Institute, the monastery, and music clubs.
Seeking state certification to teach music, Janácek's next and final year of formal education commenced at the Leipzig Conservatory in October of 1879. Given a formal leave of absence from the Teachers' Institute and taking a leave from the monastery and music clubs, Janácek chose to attend courses at the Leipzig Conservatory due to its strong international reputation. After enrolling in a great variety of courses in the first semester--form, harmony, counterpoint, organ, choral singing, piano technique, and piano performance--Janácek was decidedly frustrated with the quality of teaching to be had at the conservatory. Not only were the school's facilities in disrepair, but Janácek found the method of instruction both too traditional and unsystematic with a faculty that was "second-rate." By February of 1880, only four months after entering the school, Janácek decided to leave Leipzig.
Janácek's first and only semester at Leipzig was a personal disappointment. However, the faculty of the conservatory reported favorable marks for the disgruntled student:
His frustration at Leipzig was too great, and Janácek ignored the pleas of his professors to continue with his studies. Following a brief stop in Brno, Janácek continued his sabbatical studies at the Vienna Conservatory. Unfortunately, his opinion of the Vienna Conservatory was just as critical. Janácek had personal differences with his piano teacher, and dismissed the neo-romantic emphasis of his composition class. But he nonetheless continued with his studies.
When Janácek's violin sonata was not chosen to be part of the conservatory's composition competition, Janácek broke his silence. In a furious written protest against the decision, Janácek attempted to enter another competition. Again, his entry was rejected by a commission. In disgust and without any further possible recourse, Janácek left Vienna to return to Brno.
While the fiasco of Leipzig and Vienna left Janácek frustrated, upon his return
to Brno, Janácek was offered all of his prior music posts which he had left
behind--the Teachers' Training Institute, the St. Augustian monastery school,
and the Beseda choir. With all of Brno's musical resources at hand, Janácek
began his greatest quest as a music teacher. Janácek's greatest achievement as
an educator was the formation of the Brno Organ School in 1882.
The music school, that would later become the Czech State Conservatoire of
Music, was founded under humble circumstances. Janácek first explored the
possibility of opening a music school when he founded the Society for the
Promotion of Church Music in Moravia in 1880. This society, while serving as an
institute of art for all of Moravia, was also focused on the promotion and
improvement of Moravian church music. The school itself opened within two years
of its inception, boasting of only nine students and three teachers housed in a
one-room facility. The school's first year focused upon preparatory work, during
which time Janácek, as the school's Director, refined a curriculum of study.
Establishing a defined curriculum was the priority activity in the earliest years for the school. At first only one course was taught at a time, simultaneously among the three faculty members. Janácek's initial investigations into curriculum writing led him back to Prague in 1881. Two major music schools were located in Prague during most of the 19th Century--the Prague Conservatory and the Prague Organ School--which actually merged into a single institution in 1889. The Prague Conservatory, founded in 1811, had always been bound by the traditions of 19th-century music developments. The Prague Conservatory primarily taught orchestral instruments only through the first half of the 19th Century. The teaching of piano, organ, composition, and conducting was only added later.
The comprehensive course of studies that Janácek himself had taken as a student at the Prague Organ School was the philosophy he espoused for his new school. As he stated later in life (at the opening the Brno Conservatoire in 1919):
And so we enter upon a new life of the Conservatoire of music. The gates of music are opening and its tones are not restricted to the field of instruments. The laws of music exist in all living beings, in rhythm and in melody and by these rhythms we measure ourselves and the universe.... At the Conservatoire we want to contribute to the riches of the living Czech language.
The Prague Organ School during the 1870s, upon which Janácek based his school's course of studies, was considered to have the most progressive educational program in Czechoslovakia.
Such a progressive course was not always the offering at the Prague Organ School. Indeed, in its early years, the school was founded upon strict traditional values. Not until a change in the school's director position in 1865 did the school offer a three-year program including theory. In 1874, when Janácek attended the Prague Organ School for a year, students studied a wide variety of subjects in music: piano, violin, oboe, clarinet, harmony, rhythm, form, improvisation, history, pedagogy, liturgy, counterpoint, fugue, and choral singing.
Therefore, the new Brno Organ School curriculum was based more upon the Prague Organ School course of studies than of any other contemporary Czech school. The goals of the Brno Organ School were two-fold:
Initially only a single class of students could enter the school every third year. Only after the completion of three years' study would a new class of students be admitted into the school! But as the course of studies became better defined over the initial years, the Brno Organ School became an established institution.
As founder and Director of the Brno Organ School, Janácek maintained a high-visibility presence. His dedication to the success of the school and to its students was uncompromising. As a former student told, "He talked about...the Organ School, which was his joy and the filed in which, like the ploughman, he sowed his seeds. As he talked [about the school], his eyes sparkled..." And countless other accounts of the director were recorded:
"He was the very life and soul of the school. He seemed to be everywhere and knew about all that went on."
"He was a real father to his students and took a great interest in their progress and their circumstances. If someone was absent he would sometimes call his lodgings to see what was the trouble."
For most of his life Janácek and his wife even lived in quarters on the school grounds. And if he were away on travel or tour, Janácek worried considerably about the school during his absence: "They want me to remain here [for the concert]...but those devilish young people in the Organ School cannot be trusted."
With the formation of the Czech State in 1918, the Brno Organ School was directly affected. Within one year of the new Czech nation, Janácek's school was decreed to become the State Conservatoire. Combining the Organ School with the Beseda Society School (which Janácek also established), the State Conservatoire was ultimately forged by Janácek alone! From an initial enrollment of eleven, the Organ School had grown into a national conservatory of 186 pupils.
In the end, however, the new Conservatoire spurned Janácek. A former pupil, Jan Kunc, was offered the director position of the new school. Betrayed, Janácek did graciously accept a faculty position at the school as Professor of the Master Class in Composition. In his new capacity, he continued to pursue the wide breadth of musical learning he first displayed 37 years earlier in his career. As professor of composition, Janácek championed his musical curriculum:
[The master-class in composition cannot exist without these materials:]
Janácek enjoyed the attention and reputation received as a regionally successful composer at all three of the Brno schools--the Organ School, the Beseda School, and the Teachers' Institute. While many outstanding professors taught at these schools, Janácek was views upon by the students in a sense of awe; as one Teachers' Institute student wrote, "...it was evident to us all that a rare artist stood before us whom, however, not everyone understood." Or as another stated:
Even if our teacher was unusually silent...we always welcomed him with unusual respect whenever he entered the music room.... We felt as though we were in another atmosphere, a truly artistic one, where the soul triumphed over matter.
Perhaps not surprising, Leos Janácek was not an orthodox teacher. Despite his
formal educational training at the Teachers' Institute, Janácek
followed no known educational pedagogy style.
The numerous surviving student accounts of Janácek's classroom lessons reveal a peculiar blend of exhilaration and fear. Students were overwhelmed by the teacher's enthusiasm ("His singing lessons...became holidays of the spirit to which we looked forward more and more as time went on."), but frightened of his violent outbreaks ("If anyone in the choir made a mistake Janácek knew immediately...and pounced on him with a baton or pencil."). Students were inspired by the great teacher ("...he never failed to rouse the imagination of every thoughtful and sensitive student."), but students would also leave in confusion to find other professors ("...many of his pupils subsequently felt the need to continue their studies with other, more methodical, tutors.").
Certainly Janácek did confuse many of his students, and just as many were inspired by the man. Ultimately, however, most of the student testimonials attest to the fact that Janácek was the source for inspiration to many of his students--many participated only to seek favor from the man, not the music!: "We all knew that we owed our chance of becoming musicians to the courage and perseverance of one man." And again: "He dealt with us on the spot.... But we were fond of him. You know how it is; a rebuke from the master, a rebuke from the director..."
Leos Janácek composed music throughout his entire lifetime. While teaching may have demanded a majority of his time each day, his output of compositions was considerable. Without international success, however, teaching remained a necessity for his livelihood. Janácek was, however, already in partial retirement at the time of Jenufa's acclaim in 1918. While continuing to teach at the Brno State Conservatoire until 1925, Janácek had retired from the Teachers' Institute in 1903! While his poor health contributed to his decision to step down, he retired from the institute in order to devote more time toward composition. He continued to teach at the Conservatoire long after it was financially required of him.
Leos Janácek's professional aspirations as a musician did change throughout his lifetime. Prior to entering the Leipzig Conservatory in 1879, Janácek seemed poised to follow in the teaching legacy of his father and grandfather. Although his semester at Leipzig was a disappointment for academic reasons, Janácek did decide during that phase in his life to pursue a compositional career. Unable to secure a living as a composer, he continued teaching. Only three years later, his enthusiasm for teaching was renewed by the prospects of opening his own music school. And the accomplishment of this goal--the Brno Organ School--allowed Janácek to pursue both of his two musical ambitions: to teach and to compose. While these two pursuits competed for time each day of his life, Leos Janácek was a man who was able to succeed in both careers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
קישורים קשורים:
מוזיאון וארכיון יאנאצ'ק בעיר ברנו שבצ'כיה
דף פרטי שהקים חובב המלחין יאנאצ'ק
