Janacek: Years of a Life Volume 1 (1854-1914) (eBook)

John Tyrrell (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2011 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-26113-0 (ISBN)

Infos

John Tyrrell's biography of the Leos Janácek is the culmination of a life's work in the field. It stands upon his existing documentary studies of Janácek's operas and translations of other key sources and his examination of thousands of still unpublished letters and other documents in the Janácek archive in Brno. Altogether it provides the most detailed account of Janácek's life in any language and offers new views of Janácek as composer, writer, thinker and human being. Volume 1, which goes up to the outbreak of the First World War and Janácek's sixtieth birthday in the summer of 1914, consists of chronological chapters providing a straightforward account of Janácek's life year by year and another forty contextual chapters. Topics include on-going sequences ('Music as autobiography I', etc.; 'Janácek's knowledge of opera I', etc.) and individual chapters on Janácek as a teacher, as a theorist, as an music ethnographer, on his speech-melody theory, his relationship to particularly influential operas (Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, Charpentier's Louise), on his mentors (such as Antonín Dvorák) and his bêtes noires (such as Karel Kovarovic). A particular feature are the specially commissioned chapters on Janácek's health by Dr Stephen Lock (one of the editors of the Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine, OUP 1994 and 2001, editor of the British Medical Journal, 1975-91, and a Janácek enthusiast since the early postwar broadasts on the Third Programme), and on Janácek's earnings and finances by Dr Jirí Zahrádka (curator of the Janácek archive in Brno, and editor of authentic editions of Sárka and The Excursions of Mr Broucek).

John Tyrrell is Professor of Music at Cardiff University. His books include Czech Opera, Janácek's Operas and editions of the memoirs of Janácek's widow and Janácek's correspondence with Kamila Stösslová . He is co-author of the standard catalogue of Janácek's works and, with Sir Charles Mackerras, he edited Janácek's opera Jenufa. In 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Masaryk University of Brno for his work on Janácek and Czech music.

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John Tyrrell's biography of the Leos Janacek is the culmination of a life's work in the field. It stands upon his existing documentary studies of Janacek's operas and translations of other key sources and his examination of thousands of still unpublished letters and other documents in the Janacek archive in Brno. Altogether it provides the most detailed account of Janacek's life in any language and offers new views of Janacek as composer, writer, thinker and human being. Volume 1, which goes up to the outbreak of the First World War and Janacek's sixtieth birthday in the summer of 1914, consists of chronological chapters providing a straightforward account of Janacek's life year by year and another forty contextual chapters. Topics include on-going sequences ('Music as autobiography I', etc.; 'Janacek's knowledge of opera I', etc.) and individual chapters on Janacek as a teacher, as a theorist, as an music ethnographer, on his speech-melody theory, his relationship to particularly influential operas (Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, Charpentier's Louise), on his mentors (such as Antonin Dvorak) and his betes noires (such as Karel Kovarovic). A particular feature are the specially commissioned chapters on Janacek's health by Dr Stephen Lock (one of the editors of the Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine, OUP 1994 and 2001, editor of the British Medical Journal, 1975-91, and a Janacek enthusiast since the early postwar broadasts on the Third Programme), and on Janacek's earnings and finances by Dr Jiri Zahradka (curator of the Janacek archive in Brno, and editor of authentic editions of Sarka and The Excursions of Mr Broucek).

Rezensionen

Another story of steadily mounting fulfilment comes to a climax with the appearance of John Tyrrell's biography ... (His) industry and meticulousness are exemplary. This biography, of which the second and final volume is soon to appear, stands not only on his exhaustive research into Janacek's life and music but also on his evident familiarity with the whole swirl of Czech music in Janacek's time. ... One waits impatiently for (the) second volume.

Top of my list is the first volume of John Tyrrell's life of Janacek....Something of a tour de force ... proved entirely absorbing.

John Tyrrell's magnificent new book. ... Inevitably, in such a detailed narrative, Tyrrell is setting down material for Janacek scholars of the next generation, so there is much detail (painstaking research, documentation and musical analysis). ... For Janacek scholars, his book will be indispensable for the detailed examination of the early works ... When (Volume 2) appears, Tyrrell will surely have realised the standard work on this uniquely individual composer in the English language. That achievement is already immense, but the sequel is awaited with barely contained impatience.

John Tyrrell's outstanding account ... (he) handles his subject with the compassion, humour and understanding Janacek himself all too often lacked, but he also enables us to grasp the composer's lonely singlenes of purpose as his career after Jenufa seemed to have stalled. Bring on the second volume. I can't wait for the lonely blackbird to fly again.

Tyrrell's status as a Janacek scholar is undisputed, and this immensely scholarly tome is both impeccable and absolutely essential. ... The point of such a definitive work is not only to provide a frame of reference for years to come, but also to act as an affirmation of the central importance of Janacek as a composer and thinker.

If anyone is going to devote the best part of 1000 pages to the first 60 years of Janacek's life, it should be John Tyrrell. ... The writing is unfailingly characterful, and Tyrrell's unique mastery of the complex Czech source materials never leads him into pedestrian antiquarianism. He remains aware on every page that he is daeling with one of the most volatile, cussed, original and inspired figures in the music of the past two centuries. ... Most usefully of all, this volume doesn't avoid succinct commentary on the works which the composer did complete, and puts them in a gratifyingly substantial context of the music of the time which Janacek knew and had opinions about. It's this kind of rich historical perspective that makes the first volume of Tyrrell's Janacek biography such a memorable achievement.

Tyrrell is very successful in combining his acres of documentation with an instinct to present it engagingly. An enthralling portrait of the composer and his times emerges.

A brilliant essay in the genre.

In terms of Janacek studies, the best possible value. Few recent composer biographies have offered so much texture, so much circumstantial detail, or so clear an impression of the evolution of a creative life, and one wouldn't want the book in any other form. The lonely blackbird has never sung more clearly or more poignantly.'

Tyrrell succeeds brilliantly in presenting Janacek's world in exhaustive detail while at the same time creating a vivid portrait of his complex and often abrasive personality.

As a whole, this biography is not just indispensable to those moved by Janacek's passionate approach to music and life, but with its rich and detailed contextualisation of the biography, anyone interested in Czech music of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Right from his disarming opening line - 'Janacek would have hated this book' - you know you're in good hands. Tyrrell is a natural storyteller with a very good story to tell, and his prose, striking a perfectly judged balance between the elegant, the scholarly and the colloquial, is a pleasure from start to finish. ... This is not only the most detailed biography of the composer in any language, but, for all its length, the most absorbing, informative, enlightening and readable.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.3.2011
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Singen / Musizieren
• Schlagworte: Composers • Letters • Opera • wwi
• ISBN-10: 0-571-26113-2 / 0571261132
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-26113-0 / 9780571261130