Janáček: Mládí
The celebrated Czech composer Leoš Janáček darkened the traditional wind quintet sonority with his addition of the bass clarinet to his sextet for winds, written around his seventieth birthday in July of 1924 and ironically titled Mládí (Youth). Indeed, the idea of youth figured prominently into Janáček’s twilight years; he characterized his sextet as “a kind of memory of youth” in a letter to Kamila Stösslová, the object of his obsessive affection and herself 38 years his junior. Stösslová also inspired the young-looking but chronologically ancient heroine of Janáček’s opera, The Makropulos Affair, written concurrently with Mládí. Furthermore, the composer’s interviews for a biography and New York Times feature both published in 1924 gave him further reason to revisit his childhood memories, which find expression in Mládí’s spirit of unfettered spontaneity. Janáček’s musical depiction of the prosody of the Czech language — “speech melody,” as he called it — explains the inflection of the opening oboe melody, which is said to enunciate the words “Mládí, zlaté mládí!” (“Youth, golden youth!”). The boisterous gaiety of the outer movements contrasts the second movement’s folksy, sometimes melancholic variations, and the third movement trades a perky piccolo theme from Janáček’s time in the Old Brno Monastery with a lilting oboe melody that possesses a curious sort of Viennese grace.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival
The celebrated Czech composer Leoš Janáček darkened the traditional wind quintet sonority with his addition of the bass clarinet to his sextet for winds, written around his seventieth birthday in July of 1924 and ironically titled Mládí (Youth). Indeed, the idea of youth figured prominently into Janáček’s twilight years; he characterized his sextet as “a kind of memory of youth” in a letter to Kamila Stösslová, the object of his obsessive affection and herself 38 years his junior. Stösslová also inspired the young-looking but chronologically ancient heroine of Janáček’s opera, The Makropulos Affair, written concurrently with Mládí. Furthermore, the composer’s interviews for a biography and New York Times feature both published in 1924 gave him further reason to revisit his childhood memories, which find expression in Mládí’s spirit of unfettered spontaneity. Janáček’s musical depiction of the prosody of the Czech language — “speech melody,” as he called it — explains the inflection of the opening oboe melody, which is said to enunciate the words “Mládí, zlaté mládí!” (“Youth, golden youth!”). The boisterous gaiety of the outer movements contrasts the second movement’s folksy, sometimes melancholic variations, and the third movement trades a perky piccolo theme from Janáček’s time in the Old Brno Monastery with a lilting oboe melody that possesses a curious sort of Viennese grace.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival