Detailed Information on Publication Record

Many years before he became recognised as the founder of the Czech-Moravian national opera, and long before the successful performance of Jenufa in Prague and Vienna strengthened his position in the canon of Czech music and established his lasting international reputation, Leoš Janáček presented himself as a composer, organist, church musician, music critic – and, first and foremost, as a choirmaster and conductor. Except for Helfert, earlier musicologists have been so anxious to comment on Janáček’s later works and to tell the story about “the unrecognized genius”, that they have not paid much attention to the reception of his early activities. And, therefore, they have not realized that Janáček came to be the Janáček – the recognized genius – when he was barely thirty years old. In Brno, Janáček enjoyed great favour from the critics and the public, at first almost entirely Czech, from his first attempts as a conductor, performer, and composer. The reception of all of his artistic activities was conditioned by their specific functions in the Czech bourgeoisie culture that was becoming emancipated in Brno in the early 1870s – a culture that was in many respects late revivalist (in terms of the National Revival), ideologically oriented by the Old Czech political movement and defined by a combination of Roman Catholicism, Moravian patriotism, and Czech nationalism.