Page 30 - Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2018. Nova glasba v “novi” Evropi med obema svetovnima vojnama ?? New Music in the “New” Europe Between the Two World Wars. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 2
P. 30
nova glasba v »novi« evropi med obema svetovnima vojnama
court of King Přemysl. The Moderato (maestoso) passage is Ctirad’s greet-
ing to the king and his warriors.
The version shown is one that Janáček revised thirty years later. The
voice part (as in most of Janáček’s 1919 revision of the opera) was much
changed, but the orchestral accompaniment and its Moderato (maesto-
so) marking was there already in 1888. Note the association of this mark-
ing with two characters: a hero (Ctirad) and a king (Přemysl). By doing so
Janáček plugged into the Smetana tradition of associating maestoso music
with heroes and Czech kingship.
Janáček had began as a Czech nationalist (his opera is a sequel to Smet-
ana’s Libuše), but this path was blocked: Šárka did not reach the stage un-
til 1925 because the author of the text – whom Janáček had not consulted
– refused his permission for it to be used. And so Janáček turned his back
on this type of music altogether and instead began his involvement with
Moravian folk music, which, after a few years, would transform his style
and begin to move it nearer to the music now associated with him.
Janáček employed no more heroic-patriotic maestoso markings for al-
most thirty years since none of the music he composed during this time
called for it. However, towards the end of the First World War the Habsburg
Empire began to show signs of collapse and there was thus hope of real-
izing the nationalist dream of an independent Czech nation, Janáček, by
then famous and successful, made his contribution with a group of patriot-
ic p ieces between 1917 and 1920 which employed heroic-patriotic m aestoso.
These comprise:
Výlety pana Broučka: Výlet pana Broučka do XV. století [The Ex-
cursions of Mr Brouček:The Excursion of Mr Brouček to the Fif-
teenth Century], opera (1917);
Taras Bulba, symphonic rhapsody (1918);
Ballada blanická [The Ballad of Blaník], symphonic poem
(1919–20).
The Excursion of Mr Brouček to the Fifteenth Century takes the Prague
nineteenth-century landlord Mr Brouček back to the heroic time of the
Hussites and their defence of Prague in 1420. Musically this is character-
ized by Hussite chorales (Janáček used the original words but wrote new
musical settings for them). One of the chorales, “Slyšte, rytieři boží” [Hear
ye, warriors of God], is threaded through Act 1, each time marked maes-
toso, heard at first ‘from afar’ sung by the ‘Armed People’ (Ozbrojený lid),
28
court of King Přemysl. The Moderato (maestoso) passage is Ctirad’s greet-
ing to the king and his warriors.
The version shown is one that Janáček revised thirty years later. The
voice part (as in most of Janáček’s 1919 revision of the opera) was much
changed, but the orchestral accompaniment and its Moderato (maesto-
so) marking was there already in 1888. Note the association of this mark-
ing with two characters: a hero (Ctirad) and a king (Přemysl). By doing so
Janáček plugged into the Smetana tradition of associating maestoso music
with heroes and Czech kingship.
Janáček had began as a Czech nationalist (his opera is a sequel to Smet-
ana’s Libuše), but this path was blocked: Šárka did not reach the stage un-
til 1925 because the author of the text – whom Janáček had not consulted
– refused his permission for it to be used. And so Janáček turned his back
on this type of music altogether and instead began his involvement with
Moravian folk music, which, after a few years, would transform his style
and begin to move it nearer to the music now associated with him.
Janáček employed no more heroic-patriotic maestoso markings for al-
most thirty years since none of the music he composed during this time
called for it. However, towards the end of the First World War the Habsburg
Empire began to show signs of collapse and there was thus hope of real-
izing the nationalist dream of an independent Czech nation, Janáček, by
then famous and successful, made his contribution with a group of patriot-
ic p ieces between 1917 and 1920 which employed heroic-patriotic m aestoso.
These comprise:
Výlety pana Broučka: Výlet pana Broučka do XV. století [The Ex-
cursions of Mr Brouček:The Excursion of Mr Brouček to the Fif-
teenth Century], opera (1917);
Taras Bulba, symphonic rhapsody (1918);
Ballada blanická [The Ballad of Blaník], symphonic poem
(1919–20).
The Excursion of Mr Brouček to the Fifteenth Century takes the Prague
nineteenth-century landlord Mr Brouček back to the heroic time of the
Hussites and their defence of Prague in 1420. Musically this is character-
ized by Hussite chorales (Janáček used the original words but wrote new
musical settings for them). One of the chorales, “Slyšte, rytieři boží” [Hear
ye, warriors of God], is threaded through Act 1, each time marked maes-
toso, heard at first ‘from afar’ sung by the ‘Armed People’ (Ozbrojený lid),
28
