Many years before he became recognised as the founder of the Czech-Moravian national opera (1894), and long before the successful performance of Jenufa in Prague (1916) and Vienna (1918) strengthened his position in the canon of Czech music and established his lasting international reputation, 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 the present paper, the problematics is explained primarily with regard to the emancipation efforts of the Czech nation and to the Czech-German relations in the 19th-century Brno. The paper thus also offers a new perspective on the phenomenon of National Revival in Moravia.