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In this paper, I offer a preliminary exploration of Janáček’s piano miniature (originally composed for harmonium) Sýček neodletěl (The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away) as a masterful example of musical emotional expressivity. More specifically, I propose to interpret this brief piece as an expression of the emotional ambivalence associated with remembering. Of particular importance to my reading are anxious and neurotic elements, especially those of an obsessive-compulsive character, together with their subsequent relativisation or “re-evaluation.” This interpretation is grounded in three main considerations. First, in this work Janáček appears, for the first time, to apply consistently and indeed radically the principle that Štědroň and other Janáček scholars since the 1960s have termed “montage,” both in the sense of vertical montage and, even more significantly, at the level of horizontal montage. Second, I take the title of the piece seriously as an interpretative clue. Third, I regard as fundamental to the interpretation several fragmentary statements by the composer concerning both this particular work and the cycle Pozarotslém chodníčku (On an Overgrown Path), of which it forms a part and whose conception evolved considerably over the years.