19. - 20. century
Leos Janacek
World-renowned composer of classical music
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Description
Janacek based his work on classical Moravian folk music that he transformed to create an original style, which brought him recognition throughout the world.
He first studied at a monastic school and later at the Prague Organ School. He then crossed the borders and continued his studies in Leipzig and Vienna. In 1881 he founded an organ school, and later, in 1919 the Brno Conservatory. He achieved great success in 1904 with his opera Jenufa (Její pastorkyňa - Her Stepdaughter), and world-wide acclaim in 1916.
The
last 20 years of his life brought the pinnacle of Janacek’s work. During that time he managed to unite dramatic repetitive short motifs with a deep semantic insight into the very roots of Slavic musical culture. The culmination of this approach is the orchestral Glagolitic Mass, while his most celebrated operas include The Makropoulos Affair (based on the motifs of the novel by Karel Capek) and From the House of the Dead (inspired by F. M. Dostoyevsky). He died of pneumonia in the summer of 1928.
