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his letter to Nebuška, that his work with František Bartoš on the monumental Národní
písně moravské v nově nasbírané [Moravian folksongs newly collected] (XIII/3),
published in 1901, had taken up most of his time between the composition of Acts 1
and 2 of Jenůfa. 25 Tyrrell argues that another factor may have been Janáček’s
exposure in January 1896 to Tchaikovsky’s Пиковая дама [The Queen of Spades].
Janáček’s review of the event (Piková dáma, XV/149) shows the extent to which he
was taken with this opera, 26 and Tyrrell suggests that it was Tchaikovsky’s approach
to musical dramaturgy, radically different from that of the relatively untested Janáček,
that gave the latter pause for thought before he set out to tackle the dramatic and
expressive demands of Acts 2 and 3 of Jenůfa, very different from those of Act 1. 27
By late 1901 Janáček had resumed work on the opera, 28 with the composition
of Act 2 finished by the following summer (this Act in ŠVS was completed by Štross
on 8 July 1902, one of the few helpful dates in either of the two surviving scores; see
CHAPTER 2, §2.1). As is well known, the later stages of composition were bound up
with the illness and subsequent death, on 26 February 1903, of Janáček’s daughter
Olga. 29 Just a month earlier, on 25 January, Štross had finished copying ŠVS, and on
18 March 1903 Janáček put a completion date in his copy of Preissová’s play and in
ŠVS (presumably after a final check through of both ŠFS and ŠVS). 30
Some time in the following weeks, Janáček submitted Jenůfa to the Prague
National Theatre. Whatever faith he had in the opera that had cost him so much time
25 JODA, JP9.
26 LD I/1 -1 , 225–7; Eng. trans. Zemanová 1989, 176–9.
27 Tyrrell 1998, 14–15, and JYL i, 423–4 and 438–43.
28 JODA, 48. The possibility of an earlier resumption of work on the full score (or at least the copying
of Act 1 by Štross) is raised by an erased date at the end of Act 1 in ŠFS: see CHAPTER 2, §2.1.
29 See for example Vogel 1963, 139–41 (Eng. trans. 144–7) and Přibáňová 1984b, 57–9.
30 JODA, 48; Tyrrell 1996, iv/Tyrrell 2000, ii–iii.
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