# Did The Operas Of The Brno Schoolteacher "Drive You Berserk"?



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

I came across an interesting essay by David Littlejohn titled The Janacek Boom. It was written in 1980.



> There are still dissidents. Daily newspaper reviewers in several cities feel free to admit they do not find Janacek's music interesting to listen to, and they complain - as his detractors have done all along - of his unsystematic and fragmentary construction. Many professional critics are able to muster more enthusiasm than I can do for The Cunning Little Vixen and the first two acts of The Makropoulos Case. Many musicologists and composers have a hard time taking seriously the work of so freakish and instinctive a musician, one so ignorant (or so defiant) of the Bach-Beethoven-Wagner-Berg tradition of thematic development and symmetrical composition. ("He approaches composition as if music had not been invented before!" complained one scholar)
> 
> If your approach to music is predominantly analytic, this schoolteacher from Brno may drive you berserk. Charles Mackerras once identified forty variant "themes" for Emilia Marty alone; the composer recommended that people not bother looking for "themes" at all. One tendency of scholars of this sort is to lump Janacek along with Charles Ives as a cranky, irregular regionalist who ignored all serious mainstream developments and pasted together "found sounds" in a way that, for some occult reason, still excites the uneducated listener.
> 
> ...




Question:

Did you also find Janacek's operas to be highly 'idiosyncratic'?

Do you remember having to persevere a bit more than usual to fully internalize his works?


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Xavier said:


> Do you remember having to persevere a bit more than usual to fully internalize his works?


Janacek is one of those opera composers who reminds me I have better things to do.... In general I find his music is so short-winded and the phrasing so abrupt and broken up that one is never conscious of a continuous flow. It is a kind of perpetual recitative that is not to my taste.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Many Janacek's operas are now firmly established in the repertory, and are getting warm response from the audiences.

During the last seasons, Janacek was staged often at Teatro Real (Madrid): _The Cunning Little Vixen, Osud, From the House of the Dead, The Makropulos Case, Katia Kabanova _and_ Jenufa_, to a growing enthusiasm. I particularly remember as the highlight of the cycle, the Katia Kabanova sung by Karita Mattila before a full house, with a wonderful production by Robert Carsen and great conducting by Jiri Belohlavek, that received a standing ovation of more than 20 minutes at the end of the performance. Luckily, there is a DVD published for anyone to enjoy.


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