A Note from James Conlon, Music Director

The Language of Music, or the Music of Language

Moravian folk music, verismo drama and the Czech language find a bold new synthesis in Leoš Janácek's Jenufa

"Folk songs contain the whole human being, body, soul, and environment." (Leoš Janácek)

Leoš Janácek's Jenufa, which premiered on January 21, 1904, after almost a decade of composition, represents the convergence of several strands of contemporary cultural developments. These were some of the questions of the times: Is there a universal language of classical music? (That was the position of those who had inherited the great Italian/Germanic tradition.) Or is there a music idiom to be created that finds its roots not in the international language of the courts of Europe but in the mother tongues of the common people? (That was the position of the Russian Mussorgsky, the Moravian Janácek and, later, the Hungarian Bartók.)

Was folk music a source of occasional delight, to be used as amusing diversion in a more sophisticated art form (as in Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven)? Or was it a treasure trove of human wisdom, unlocking the human soul and powerful spiritual and psychic energies to be transformed into a new music? Is musical theater still best served, as it was from its Florentine roots, by sources from classical history and mythology, Nordic gods, medieval knights, stories of the great and mighty, of kings and queens? Or is it best served by looking for inspiration from the daily drama of contemporary common people?

The choice to explore the latter became a trademark of verismo opera. We associated it with the last decade of the Italian 19th century, and we associated with the names of Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Puccini.

Leoš Janácek was to find and resoundingly answer these questions to his own satisfaction. Music was to spring from the mother tongue, the language of folk song, and theater was to be served from the dramatization of common folk's lives. Jenufa stands as a perfect synthesis. Janácek researched Moravian folk music for decades. He adamantly defended the Czech language against the overwhelming domination of German. A Russophile, he turned eastward to celebrate Pan-Slavism.

He chose a shocking drama by Gabriela Preissová, a young feminist, who belonged to a movement claiming a place for the voice of women writers. She recounts a tale of the murder of an infant, a story that could be written today, and in so doing, implicates a rural society dominated by social and religious prejudice, sexism and the inequalities of class. But this tale of love and a woman's place in the world turns into an inspiring ode to forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion and mature love.

There are no stick figures in this drama. Each character is animated by his or her contradictions and, above all, obsessions. The repetitive rhythmical nature of Janácek's music seems almost to abstractify obsession and turn it into a character itself. Kostelnicka's obsessive determination to impose what she sees as "God's will" leads her to become a murderess. Laca shows a predisposition towards violence, but learns to love more fully through insight and acceptance. Števa, who profits by his good looks and superficiality, perhaps does not evolve, but is at least subdued.

Jenufa embodies the power of transcendence. Like Donna Elvira, she loves a countryside's minor equivalent of Don Juan. Through a series of misfortunes, she consistently demonstrates her capacity to evolve with compassion, comprehension and premature wisdom. Her face is scarred; she bravely bears her illegitimate child, mourns his death, tolerates Kostelnicka's ravings, and bears up under scandal on the morning of her wedding. In the face of this, she forgives all of her transgressors and embraces the future with equanimity and strength.

Throughout operatic history, the texts of operas, their libretti, were fashioned in order to provide a composer with the material necessary for his creative muse. At times, in the 19th century, libretto-writing descended to the level of factory-like handiwork. Rare were the occasions that a play was to be converted directly into an opera. Mozart and da Ponte shortened and arranged Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro into an opera. Da Ponte, in the preface to the original libretto, wrote "I have not made a translation of that excellent comedy, but rather an imitation, or, let us say, an extract."

There are few, if any, Italian operas which are literal translations of dramatic works. Verdi extensively cut and recast in order to fit his needs. Puccini confronted this challenge with pared down versions of Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Il Tabarro.

It was not until the second half of the 19th century that the idea to take a text and rigorously set it to music began to exert a fascination. It corresponds with the burgeoning freedom from the domination of Western Europe (of mostly Italian and German influence) that resulted in the development of nationalistic music (significantly Russian, Czech and to a lesser extent, French). Mussorgsky's seminal work The Marriage, based on Gogol, was a first step toward realizing his theories of creating a musical language that is born of the spoken language.

Janácek, without direct knowledge of any of these works (he precedes Richard Strauss and Zemlinsky) was attempting to do the same thing by using the spoken Czech language as a starting point and inspiration to discover a less tangible musical language based on the intonations (not imitation of) of the spoken word in the context of its expression of a multiplicity of emotive and dramatic situations.

Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (based on a play by Maeterlinck), Strauss' Salome and Zemlinsky's A Florentine Tragedy (both based on works by Oscar Wilde), are all examples of literal renderings. (Debussy wrote his opera in the original French, while libretti for the Strauss and Zemlinsky operas are in German translations of, respectively, the French and English originals.)

So the time was ripe to forgo writing an opera libretto so that it "fits into the music" but to boldly submit to a text for which the music will have no fear of not finding its own voice. Preissová's text provides the link between 19th-century romanticism and a preview of 20th-century social criticism. In this work, the countryside, with its folk customs and culture, is not picturesque or decorative; it is a protagonist in Janácek's dynamic, hair raising and uplifting music drama.

The premise of western music of the 18th and most of the 19th century was that it was a language whose laws were to be discovered, codified and applied. Each new generation was to inherit them and contribute to a developing expression within its universe. If it was related to its linguistic roots at all, (largely Italian and German), it was not self consciously so. Janácek's starting point could be described as rejecting the Western model of the "language of music," and striving to create new sounds which are the "music of language." And by language, he meant Czech.

His music, by this methodology, would be unlike any that preceded it. Jenufa was premiered two and a half months before Dvorak's death. Thus, the mantle symbolically passed from those giant 19th-century shoulders, to those of Janácek. He would certainly become the greatest Czech composer of the 20th century. Like Mussorgsky, his supreme genius transcended it nationalist roots, and attained the universal. He had inherited much from Smetana and Dvorak, both of whom had poured the Czech soul into Western musical syntax. Janácek unleashed the entire Slavic soul, broke the Western mold, and created a sound universe of his own.

© 2007 by James Conlon. All rights reserved.