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prompted by the fact that, though such figuration comes naturally to fiddle players in
folk bands, the technique is less easily captured by musicians trained in the playing of
art music. There is also a third possibility. By 1916, Janáček reworked the music of
the Kostelnička–Števa scene (see below, §3.4), so that the only trace left of this
figuration — in its 1908 demisemiquaver guise — is at the moment of Jenůfa’s cry
from the bedroom (fig. 48). In his changes to the folk music passages in general, and
to the duvaj figuration in particular, Janáček may have been trying to play down the
more ostentatiously ‘Moravian’ aspects of Jenůfa’s soundworld, a possibility that is
discussed further below in the conclusion (§3.6).
3.3.4 The Act endings
Among the most telling of Janáček’s 1907/8 revisions are the changes he made to the
end of each Act. Whilst the Act openings were, more or less, ‘right first time’ (with
the possible exception of the Act 3 prelude; see above), the changes to the final
curtains are revealing because, both in Jenůfa and in his later operas, Janáček
achieved some of the most thrilling and often uplifting closes in the operatic
repertoire.
Some of the revisions are simple yet surprising: not even those who had pored
closely over the surviving manuscripts had spotted that in 1904 the very end of the
opera was two bars longer. In 1907 the original ending was pasted over in ŠVS,
effectively removing the antepenultimate and penultimate bars (as indicated by the
bracket in Ex. 3.29), whilst in ŠFS the final folio (fol. 122) was removed and the
shortened ending squeezed onto fol. 121v (see CHAPTER 2, §2.1). At the same time, a
gradual quickening of pace was added: originally the whole of the final scene,
including the orchestral conclusion, was marked simply ‘Moderato’, but in 1907
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