sources - Nottingham eTheses - The University of Nottingham

Another change to the timpani line was made at the end of Act 1. Compared with the
1904 version of these bars, the continuous quavers of the 1908 version create an
increased sense of momentum which is halted only in the final bar:
Ex. 3.31
It was in the Act 1 finale leading up to this close, however, that Janáček made some of
the most far-reaching changes among his 1907/8 revisions. One of the most notable
excisions here was the extended passage based on diminished chords starting at fig.
118a, which in the 1904 version seems to mark the beginning of the finale as a formal
unit (see Ex. 3.32a on the following page). By jettisoning this music — twenty bars in
all — and grafting Laca’s words over a skilfully dovetailed revision of the passages
either side of it (see Ex. 3.32b), Janáček not only managed to achieve a more seamless
— and dramatically much faster moving — transition to the crucial moment when
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