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seems also to reflect an original conception which perhaps attempted to emulate the
rhythmic subtleties of folk music, with much use of duplets within the original 6/4
metre. Elsewhere the change in metre is sometimes linked to a change of tempo: the
interjection of the recruits in Act 1 Scene 5 (‘Ale je to přísná ženská’, fig. 75), after
the Kostelnička’s demand that Števa should abstain from drink for one year, was
originally written in 6/8 but revised to a more animated 6/16 Più mosso by October
1903. In such instances, the metrical change serves primarily as notational
clarification (in this case, the new tempo arguably ‘looks’ faster when notated in
semiquavers rather than the original quavers).
More radical, however, was the metrical revision to Jenůfa’s ‘Beztoho bude’
(Act 1 Scene 6, fig. 92). A close examination of both ŠFS and ŠVS reveals that this
passage was originally notated not in the 4/8 of 1904 and later versions but in 5/8:
Ex. 3.1
In his 1903 revisions (most probably after the opera was turned down by the Prague
National Theatre that spring) Janáček effected a change to 4/8 by adding semiquaver
beams to the second and third quavers in each bar, as is visible in Fig. 3.1:
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