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The 1904 version of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa: sources, reconstruction, commentary
Abstract
The main part of the thesis comprises a two-volume reconstruction of the full score of
the 1904 première version of Janáček’s opera Jenůfa (volumes II/1, II/2 and II/3).
Jenůfa was the work that belatedly brought Janáček first to national and then to
international attention as an opera composer of the first rank, yet the version heard at
the Brno première in 1904 had until recently been unheard since 1906. This is also
the first completely newly-set edition of the full score in any version for nearly four
decades.
The companion volume (volume I) consists of a commentary including an
introduction to the background history of the opera’s composition, a detailed survey of
the manuscript and printed sources used in the preparation of the edition, and a
description of the methods used in identifying and reconstructing the 1904 version. It
also includes a detailed overview of the revision process of which the 1904 version is
a part, and which ultimately led to the more widely known 1908 and 1916 versions of
the opera, as well as a consideration of some of the wider contextual issues to which
the opera can be related, such as Janáček’s broader stylistic development and
contemporary operatic trends.
A series of appendices includes relevant contemporary documents, a series of
tables detailing cuts and other aspects of the sources, a discussion of the nature and
role of the xylophone that plays a prominent part in Act 1 of Jenůfa, and transcriptions
of passages from the earliest, pre-1903 version of the Act 1 finale.