Janacek: Choruses For Male Voices

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Cat No: 8553623

Release Date: 01 January 2001

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099462327

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: JANACEK

Description
Leos Janaček (1854-1928) Choruses for Male VoicesThe Czechcomposer Leos Janaček is now widely regarded as being one of the mostimportant and original artists of the early twentieth century. A distinguishedmusical dramatist, he wrote a total of nine operas at least five of which areconsidered to be major works that have become a regular part of the repertory -Jenůfa (1894-1903), Kalya Kabanova (1919-21), The CunningLittle Vixen (1921-23), The Makropulos Affair (1923-25) and Fromthe House of the Dead (1927-28). Janaček was a multi-faceted artist, acomposer, conductor, organist, teacher, writer and a significant authority onfolk-music, and the stylistic trait that is central to an understanding of hiswork is the unique treatment of melody resulting from his intensive study ofMoravian speech, and more specifically the subtle fluctuations of spokenintonation brought about by the speaker' s changing inner emotional state. Thecomposer was of the opinion that 'a fragment of national life is attached toevery word uttered by the people; the melody of their speech should be studiedin every detail'.BothJanaček's grandfather and father were teachers and musicians and at theage of eleven Leos entered the Augustinian Monastery in Brno as a chorister.Here he benefited greatly from the encouragement of the choirmaster andcomposer Pavel Křizkovsk?¢, eventually succeeding him as choirmaster in1872. Janaček's excellent work with the choir led to a request thefollowing year to conduct the Svatopluk (a post he held from 1873-77), aworking-men's choral society for which he wrote his first compositions. In 1874he undertook further music studies, first at the Prague Organ School then atthe Leipzig Conservatory and in Vienna, before returning to Brno as a musicmaster at the Teachers' Institute An added incentive to write for chorus camewith the formation in 1903 of the Moravian Teachers' Choir (the same choir ason this recording). Janaček established a close friendship with itsconductor, Ferdinand Vach, and it was this choir that gave the premieres ofmost of his works in the genre.Following anearly period of romantic works the language of which was indebted to earlierCzech composers, notably Dvořak, the formation of Janaček'sindividual style dates from the composition of his third opera Jenůfa. Thefinal, intensely creative decade of his life coincided with Jenůfa's long-overduesnccess, the birth of an independent Czechoslovakia, and his love for a youngmarried woman, Kamila Stosslova. To this utterly remarkable late period belongsome of Janaček's finest works including the orchestral rhapsody TarasBulba (1915-1918), the song-cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared (1917-19),the Sinfonietta (1926), the two String Quartets (1923 and 1928),and the Glagolitic Mass (1926), as well as his operatic masterpieces.Apart from opera the only other genre that Janaček worked in throughouthis life is the one featured o
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