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its icy tone will be damped’ suggests both, on the one hand, that this was the case and,
on the other, that the composer wanted to mute this aspect of its sound. If the latter
observation is correct, the possibility that Janáček may have had in mind a sound closer
to written pitch cannot be ruled out. The fact that two passages (I/i/293–302 and
I/vii/1–12) are doubled at written pitch by the violas might be taken to support this
view, but is inconclusive in itself, for octave doubling is not uncommon in xylophone
writing, with the instrument’s bright high range ‘colouring’ the lower instrument with
which it is paired. More persuasive, however, is the fact that all the xylophone’s
passages in the piano vocal score (ŠVS) are written at the same octave as in the full
score (ŠFS). 27 This provides some justification for the solution (unavailable to Janáček
himself) adopted by Charles Mackerras in his two recordings of Jenůfa, of using a
marimba, with its increased lower range and employing softer sticks, to obtain a sound
which corresponds to the written pitch — a sound which may arguably be closer to what
Janáček may have had in mind for this first use of the xylophone in any of his works. 28
Whatever the possible answers to these questions, Janáček’s use of the
xylophone in Jenůfa helps to create an unmistakable sound-world. For a comparably
bold use of an instrument with clear extra-musical associations to open an extended
work, one has to look to the sleigh bells that launch Mahler’s Fourth Symphony,
composed in 1899–1900 and premièred in 1901. 29 The xylophone plays a similar kind
27 This argument is strengthened by the fact that the same pitches remain in KPU which, in Tyrrell’s
words, ‘carries particular authority, especially since it was subjected to more rigorous proofreading […]
than was the case in [Janáček’s] later works.’ Tyrrell 1996, xiii and Tyrrell 2000, vii.
28 Mackerras’s two recordings are on Decca 414 483-2 (Söderström, Randová, Wiener Philharmoniker,
et al.) and Chandos CHAN 3106(2) (in English: Vaughan, Barstow, Welsh National Opera, et al.).
29 Given Janáček’s well-documented dislike of Viennese operetta, it seems unlikely (notwithstanding
his brief time spent as a student in the Habsburg capital and his wife’s family connections there) that he
was familiar with Johann Strauss the younger’s Moulinet-Polka, op.57 (1858), which opens with a
woodblock depicting the turning of the ‘little mill’ of the title.
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