Janacek's Uncollected Essays on Music

Most of the 47 essays collected and felicitously translated in this volume were written by the noted Czech composer for Moravian journals, magazines and newspapers between 1886 and 1928. They cover many topics--Janacek's attitudes toward music, his compositional methods, sources of inspiration, opera reviews, reminiscences of other composers, travels. Eccentric celebrations of an idiosyncratic artistic vision, these sketches, many of which are accompanied by musical examples that show how he rendered speech in his music, are permeated with impressionistic images and demonstrations of Janacek's theory that speech is akin to melody. Explanatory notes preceding each piece explain the numerous references to people, places and events unfamiliar to an English-speaking audience and, together with the biographical sketch that introduces the book, provide an outline of the composer's life from his birth in 1854 to his death in 1928. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)