A few points:
Broucek does not belong to Janacek's "earlier Nationalistic period." It was composed for the most part in the mid 1910s. Janacek was in his late 50s and early 60s. No one claims that Jenufa is in any way immature, and Broucek came more than a decade later. Musically the piece is quite close in style to Kat'a Kabanova, certainly closer to the later works than the earlier ones. The fact that several authors took part in crafting the libretto, or that the work's two parts stem from two different novellas, has no bearing the piece's musical or dramatic coherence; nor is its humor "Nationalist" in character--and this is particularly true of the journey to the moon, a parody on same sort of self-conscious aestheticist movement that we find in, say, Sullivan's Patience. Indeed, in this earlier of the two parts we see Janacek clearly moving away from an overtly nationalist style; and the second part, with its Hussite hymns, may be patriotic in places, but it also does not make use of folk tunes or have anything resembling the rusticity of the typical "village opera."
We must be wary of letting biographical facts assume greater importance than that actual musical results. Many works have had very long gestation periods--think of Wagner's Siegried, for example, or Brahms' First Symphony (nearly 20 years). This is not in itself an indication of any sort of stylistic inconsistency or immaturity, and this is particularly the case in considering operatic composition, where the prospect of an actual performance always looms large in the composer's decision to complete the work. For the record, Janacek's early period is considered to end with Jenufa, completed when he was around 50, and another work on which he labored for about nine years--precisely the amount of time that he worked on Broucek (1908-17).
This doesn't mean that Broucek is Janacek's greatest work, nor does it have to be. It is, however, a fully characteristic work of his maturity, one with its own special sound (nothing unusual there either--does Aida sound like Fastaff?); Charles Mackerras, who prepared the edition used in this recording, told me he had a particular fondness for it and would have loved to make a recording. Perhaps he still may.
Dave H
P.S. "Fate" is not "fragmentary." It is a complete, finished work--so compact in fact that its brevity has counted against it in performance.
Sometimes you make me feel that you don't read the posts you want to reply to, Dave:
- I wasn't talking about any "earlier Nationalistic period" (there certainly wasn't any later nationalistic period) but his "early period" which uses national(istic)
and folk elements much more explicitly and towards different ends than the later works. In later works, to be sure, the folk elements are still there but their function is different, serving for instance as unifying stylistic devices. Do you know a little bit of Moravian folk music and Janacek's deep interest in it and folk music in general? Then you know that he even developed a theory of sorts about the functions of folk music as the foundation, or more accuratly a fount, of future music. That's obviously a little broader and more fundamental and something very different than the pastoral pleasures you'd find in the rustic scenes of a village opera, which has nothing to do with something like the folk elements in "Broucek" or in Janacek in general. Moreover, for Janacek (and this is really the "specialty" he's known by even more broadly), "folk" also meant ways of human speech, the note of the "living" folk language that he drew upon not just as an inspiration but also as a compositional principle in notating his vocal lines (indeed as you should know this is one of the main features characterizing Janacek's music, perhaps his main innovation even). All this, too, is there in "Broucek" already. (Where Janacek basically worked this method out was, precisely, in the much earlier "Fate".)
- It's standard practice to separate Janacek's works into the late operas (plus some other nonoperatic works) in one group and all the rest in another. Where you are right is that in Janacek hardly anything is really "early," given how literally late he started blooming. The distinction is based on his belated creative flurry and the significance of the original masterpieces it gave rise to, not his personal age. (Very few composers can actually be said to possess a "late style" by the way; there are some musicologists who would consider only Beethoven and Mahler as true representatives of such a fundamental shift.)
- If you don't think the second "act" is nationalistic in tone, I'm going to get alarmed.
Partly the national(istic) elements and features overlap with the folk aspects, as in the re-composed Hussite songs. (They are sort of parody songs of the originals, not parodizing the Hussites -- on the contrary! -- but a bit in the same sense as the parody masses of the Renaissance: Janacek adopted the style faithfully and composed very nice "Hussite" songs of his own based on the original model.) Hussite songs, again, are very much part of the folk culture, being for instance sung still today in the pubs around the country but I suspect especially in Prague (judging from personal experience and the fact that that's where the defining events took place... But you've been there, seen that, I'm sure). Yet, they are always and forever understood within the national(istic) spirit. This would be so already by definition: Hussite hymns would for you be a little like ballads about Paul Revere or the battle songs of the Minutemen (if such exist) -- in other words basically the very definition of what we understand as "patriotic" (as you call it) or nationalistic (as many others would call it). And in the "Broucek" Janacek wasn't moving away from the nationalist style but more like revisiting it, quite explicitly indeed. (THe work was to serve the resurgence of the "Czech" people and folk culture during heightened consciousness-raising efforts at the time of the collapse of the Habsburg empire.) Haven't you heard it? It's not like it's that ambigous on this point or something.
- It's not "Nationalistic humor" as you incorrectly claim but
folk humor that stamps the work. If boozing and hanging out in pubs which forms the one red thread through the opera don't count as elements of folk humor, what does? Or the cheap shots on the "lunatic" vegetarians who don't eat meat and drink beer, and so forth, or tragic-funny confusions based on different dialects?
- You may think that "Broucek" cohers well but many others really hold lack thereof as the main objection against it. To them it seems directionless and just wandering about somewhat aimlessly for the most part. I certainly belong to that group. Are you basing your opinion on the actual hearing of the opera or hearsay?
- And "Broucek" is not really "fully characteristic" of his "maturity," if by maturity we mean the great late operas already talked about. (I don't think a composer's maturity is the same as anything done after turning 50.) If you try listening to the operas in the order of their composition, you will find his language developing quite radically, even, more and more towards less and less lyricism and lushness, which austerity then came to signify as his hallmark as one of the giants, along with an evolution in the usage of folk elements from pretty straightforward themes and quotations to almost something like motifs serving as equivalents of an organizing principle (as with the famous three-note Moravian figure). That Mackerras likes "Broucek," too, says nothing about its position in Janacek's total oeuvre; perhaps he even left it unrecorded for a reason. (And it wouldn't surprise me if he even preferred it to, say, "The House of the Dead"; he's not exactly a staunch supporter of innovation in music, shall we say, at least not post 19th century.) But of course, "Broucek" does have its own special sound the same way almost all of the works still performed today have.
- Now, regarding "Osud" ("Fate"): One of the descriptive titles Janacek used for the work is "novelistic fragments from life." In other editions Janacek used the designation "three scenes," never actually going on to call the work an "opera." The designation is indeed fitting as the work lacks a unifying language that could make the highly disparate acts somehow cohere. A work doesn't need to be unfinished to remain dramatically fragmentary. And this fragmented nature of the "Fate" is probably the main reason for its lack of broader appeal in the opera houses of the world. Try hearing it, again it's not that ambiguous. There is even an English language recording of it available, by Mackerras of all people. It's very nice, I have to say, and something really easy to follow, for a change.
PT
