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Ex. 3.13b
This revision is similar to the one Janáček had made to Jenůfa’s ‘A co Števa’ in Act 2
in the pre-première revisions (see above, §3.1, Exx. 3.6a and b), although an important
difference is that Janáček now removes the accompaniment for just a few bars at a
time while keeping it as occasional punctuation for the vocal lines (as in the
continuation of Ex. 3.13b). Such a technique becomes particularly effective when the
orchestral accompaniment features a short motif which, instead of being constantly
repeated, is broken up, so that the essence of the original idea is, as it were, ‘distilled’.
A particularly instructive example of this kind of process is the Kostelnička’s
‘Už od té chvíle’ in the first scene of Act 2 (fig. 5). This is the point at which the
music of the prelude finally gives way to an arching motif developed from the cadence
figure of the prelude, as the Kostelnička reflects on her feelings ‘ever since that
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