Sinfonietta

Related Artists/Companies

Past Performances

National Symphony Orchestra Leonard Slatkin, Conductor/Joshua Bell, violin - Sep 30 - Oct 2, 2004

About the Composition

The Sinfonietta, composed in 1926, was given its premiere in Prague on June 29 of that year by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under Václav Talich. The National Symphony Orchestra first performed this work in the concerts of January 25-28, 1983, under Mstislav Rostropovich, and presented it last on January 17, 18, 19 and 22, 1991, Jirí Belohlávek conducting.

The score calls for 2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 9 trumpets in C, 3 trumpets in F, 2 bass trumpets, 4 trombones, 2 tenor tubas, bass tuba, timpani, cymbals, bells, harp, and strings Duration, 22 minutes.

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As the youngest of the triumvirs credited with the creation of the modern nationalisist tradition in Czech music, Leoš Janácek had certain advantages over his senior colleagues Bedrich Smetana and Antonín Dvorák. He not only had their works as models and inspiration, but grew up in an atmosphere in which the nationalist cause had become a bit less of a struggle in some respects. By the time he was eight years old the Austrian rulers of Bohemia and Moravia had approved a new constitution that made the teaching of the Czech language compulsory in the schools and acknowledged certain other manifestations of the nationalist sprit without granting full autonomy. (Dvorák and Smetana were Bohemians, Janácek a Moravian; those two regions constitute today's Czech Republic, formerly unified with Slovakia to form Czechoslovakia.) The young Janácek heard operas by Smetana, Dvorák and others which had been conceived and created in the Czech language, and from those composers he received every encouragement to pursue their shared objectives in his own way.

It was Dvorák who was the young Janácek's particular hero. As a young conductor in Brno he made the Moravian capital a center for the performance of Dvorák's music, and the two composers, only 13 years apart in age, became friends. The amount of actual direct influence by Dvorák, Smetana or any other composer reflected in Janácek's music, however, is far less than one might have assumed. He was an “original,” eventually using actual Czech speech patterns as a basis for much of his music. There is a unique quality in his work that makes the search for antecedents frustrating and renders successful imitation unlikely.

While Janácek began producing significant works in his twenties, his big breakthrough in terms of both achievement and recognition, came only in his 50th year, with the production of his third opera, Její pastorkyna (“Her Foster Daughter,” better known everywhere as Jenufa). The greatest of his orchestral and choral works—the Sinfonietta and the Glagolitic Mass— were completed in 1926, when he was 72. (When a critic was rash enough to take the Glagolitic Mass as a sign that the free-thinking composer had at last become a “pious old man,” Janácek fired off a postcard on which he retorted, “Neither pious nor old—and no believer till I see for myself!”)

Janácek shared with Dvorák a somewhat broader view of national identify than Smetana's, and embraced in some of his works a “pan-Slavonic” approach. He drew upon Russian literature for his operas Káta Kabanová (based on Ostrovsky's play The Storm ) and From the House of the Dead (after Dostoyevsky's novel) as well as the orchestral rhapsody after Gogol's story of the legendary Cossack leader Taras Bulba. At the same time, he did not neglect the traditions and lore of his own homeland: he set several Czech poems and legends to music, and among his orchestral works are the ingratiating Lachian Dances and the later tone poem The Legend of Blaník. The nationalist or patriotic motivation was always present: the Glagolitic Mass, despite the pan-Slavonic connotation of its text, was created, Janácek declared, “to express faith in the certainty (that is, the sure survival) of the nation, not on a religious basis but on moral foundations, which call upon God as witness.” The Sinfonietta, his most brilliant work for orchestra, was directly and solely nationalistic in its original inspiration, and in its final form it is identified with the city of Brno, expressing, again in Janácek's words, “the contemporary free man, his spiritual beauty and joy, his strength, courage and determination to fight for victory.”

Without that remark of the composer's, the title of this powerful work might be somewhat deceptive for those who approach the work for the first time. The term “sinfonietta” tends to suggest a rather lightweight piece, or in any event a lightly scored one, but Janácek spoke of this work as his Military Sinfonietta , and originally dedicated it to the Czechoslovak armed forces (though the published score carries a dedication to the British critic and musicologist Rosa Newmarch, an authority on Russian and Czech music). The orchestral forces specified in the score, as detailed above, unequivocally dispel any notion of the work as being either miniature or lightweight.

All that extra brass reflects the origin of the work, which grew out of a set of fanfares Janácek composed for the Sokol slet (national gymnastic festival) of 1926. The fanfares themselves were incorporated into the Sinfonietta, and the trumpets, tubas and drums for which they were written were added to the orchestra as a sort of concertino or second orchestra, with a function largely independent of the larger body.

There are five movements. Janácek gave them descriptive headings which refer to specific images of the recently liberated city of Brno, and he expanded on the work's symbolism in an article he published at the end of 1927 under the title “My Home Town.” After dwelling briefly on the unpleasant character of the city in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he concluded on a more positive note:

And then I saw the town undergo a miraculous change. I lost my dislike of the gloomy Town Hall, my hatred of the hill from whose depths so much pain was screaming, my distaste for the street and its throng. As if by a miracle, liberty was conjured up, glowing over the town—the rebirth of 28 October 1918. I saw myself in it. I belonged to it. And the blare of the victorious trumpets, the holy peace of the Queen's Monastery, the shadows of the night, the breath of the green hill and the vision of the growing greatness of the town, of my Brno, were all giving birth to my Sinfonietta.

This, according to Janácek's biographer Jaroslav Vogel,

is the key to the mystery of the titles: here we have the Brno Town Hall—now become Czech; the castle on the hill is the notorious Špilberk with its dungeons; and the Brno streets with the new, free life.

The opening Allegretto , designated F ANFARES , is just that, a prefatory piece whose brief phrases are derived from the initial three-note motif, scored for the trumpets, tubas and timpani.

The second movement, T HE C ASTLE ( Andante—Allegretto—Maestoso ), much longer than the preceding one, is again based on repeated short phrases, but is more varied rhythmically and much richer in color with the participation of the full orchestra. The middle section introduces a jagged theme curiously reminiscent of the concluding jota in Falla's ballet The Three-Cornered Hat ; Janácek used this theme again in his last opera, From the House of the Dead.

A flowing melody in the strings opens the third movement, T HE Q UEEN'S M ONASTERY , which is in three parts ( Moderato—Con moto— Prestissimo ). There are striking display passages for the brass amid skirling winds, but the movement eventually ends quietly and reflectively.

T HE S TREET ( Allegretto ), nearly as short as the first movement, is a vigorous scherzo-like piece. Longest of the five movements is the last, a grand summing-up headed T HE T OWN ( Andante con moto—Maestoso—Allegretto ). The theme stated by the flutes in the opening recalls the middle movement. Once other instruments come in and begin passing the material among them there is a subtle but perceptible undercurrent of excitement, of building to an inevitable climax. Its arrival is signalled by a single clash of the cymbals (the only one in the entire work), and with stunning effect the fanfares of the opening movement return, this time thrown into dramatic relief over the strings and winds for an eruption of jubilation that is at once earthy and unworldly.