A little distance can be beneficial: talking with John Tyrrell, and not just about his forthcoming monograph about Leos Janacek.

The musicologist John Tyrrell is an internationally acknowledged expert on the life and work of Leos Janacek. Currently he is attached to the music faculty of the University of Cardiff where he has been working intensively on a monograph about Janacek which was originally supposed to have come out in the Janacek Jubilee Year of 2004. But publication has been hampered by certain complications ...

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What will your new book be called, and when and where will it be coming out?

I always find titles difficult, and although I have always had working titles, all of my books tend to call themselves something else in the end. At the moment my new book is called Leos Janacek: Years of a Life, but I can't guarantee that will be its final title. As for where and when it might come out, this is even more of a problem. The book was originally published by Faber & Faber, which publishes handsome, well-produced books, and with which I have published three books on Janacek since 1992. Ten years ago they commissioned a biography of Janacek, which was due to appear in 2004 for the anniversary year. The commissioned length was 200,000 words--i.e. 500 printed pages. But almost as soon as I started serious writing, my book showed signs of growing far beyond this length. When I confessed to my editor at Faber that they would be getting rather more than they had asked for--three times as much--she turned pale and said that it might be best if looked elsewhere.

Two years later I had an unexpected stroke of luck. In January 2004 I went to Brno for the very successful Janacek Festival. So did about 40 members of the Dvorak Society (from England). Several made themselves known to me and one, an elderly gentleman, got talking--it was at the party in the Besedni dum after JAMU had conferred an honorary doctorate on Sir Charles Mackerras. The gentlemen, whose name was Jim Page, told me that his son was the chief executive of Faber & Faber. So of course I turned the conversation round to Faber's decision not to publish my biography and how curious it was that here in Brno for two weeks of Janacek operas was the father of the chief executive of the firm that had done so much for Janacek in England, but was now reluctant to go ahead with what I hoped would be a useful and definitive Janacek biography. And wouldn't it be a good idea if Mr Page senior should have a quiet word with his son when he got back to England saying that he thought Faber might be making a terrible mistake. Jim Page was happy to accept this mission. Things didn't happen immediately; but within a few months the music books editor at Faber and I were talking again and in the end we agreed the following: that Faber would take the book and publish it in two volumes of about 800 pages each. The first would appear in about October 2006 and the second in October 2007. These would be more expensive books than the ones that Faber usually publish and would need a small subsidy to ensure they do not actually lose money on the deal. Perhaps without Mr Page this happy outcome would never have come about. My only problem is trying to finish volume 1 in time for Faber's deadline this year ...

Tell us something about your view of Janacek and his work ...

My 'book' is in fact two books. One is a fairly straightforward chronological account, year by year. Most years of Janacek's adult life will have a single chapter '1893', '1894' etc; some of the later--and longer--years will have two ('1917a', '1917b'). This is what gives the book its working title. This part of the book, maybe three quarters of it, is written on the basis of the large database that I have built up over many years comprising Janacek letters and documents, putting them (and their contents) into a chronological order. In the last few years I have been helped by a couple of young Brno musicologists (Jan Spacek and Simona Sedlackova) who have painstakingly compared my database to the card catalogues in the Janacek archive and given me details for any documents I don't yet have.

But threaded through this chronological account are short chapters based not on chronology but on particular topics. Some of them I am publishing (or have already published) in preliminary versions, include 'How Janacek wrote operas', 'Janacek and programme music', 'Conventions in Janacek operas' (1). These topics deal with genres of Janacek's music; particular problems (for instance autobiographical connections in his music--there will be several chapters on this for different stages of his life); people who affected his life (Dvorak, Kovarovic, Brod, Nejedly); topographical chapters (spa life during Janacek's day at Luhacovice, and a whole series of chapters on Brno at roughly ten-yearly intervals); and so on. In general these 'topics' provide context and allow me to go into matters more deeply so that they do not hold up the narrative in the chronological sections. I won't write all of these topic chapters myself. For instance Dr Stephen Lock, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, who provided a fascinating examination of Olga's illnesses that I included in my edition of Zdenka Janackova's memoirs, will be writing a series of articles on Janacek's health. And Jiri Zahradka, with the aid of a grant from the British Arts and Humanities Research Board, has been working through Janacek's finances, and will contribute a comprehensive account whose object is to estimate how wealthy Janacek was at various stages of his life. Altogether there will be about 50 of these 'topic' chapters. I can't imagine many people will want to read the whole book all the way through, but the clear arrangement will, I hope, allow readers to find out what they want to know fairly easily.

Your book on Czech opera has come out in Czech as well. Can we Czechs look forward to reading your Janacek book ain our own language s well?

I doubt it. It will be a very long book, so it would mean a huge amount of translation, which would add greatly to the cost. I can't imagine that it would pay a Czech publisher to publish it. Naturally if any Czech publisher was interested, I would be only too delighted to make the book available for translation.

You are known for considering Janacek to be first and foremost an opera composer. In the book do you give more space to Janacek's operas than to his other work?

I am planning twelve topic chapters devoted to operatic matters--that's about a quarter of all the topics. However, in the chronological account, operas bulk large--not just because I am keen on the operas (which I am!) but because they took up so much of Janacek's time, and left so much trace in his correspondence, which is my chief source of information. In comparison, most of the nonoperatic works were written very quickly and easily and leave less trace in the correspondence. There is just less to be said about them.

I know that you don't like expressing definitive conclusions and prefer to open up new space for further research, by which I mean mainly your systematic documentation work. You have been engaging in long-term study of the Janacek sources, and contributed to the publication of a catalogue of Janacek's works. How should we regard a monograph on Leos Janacek is not as an exhaustive and definitive account of the life and work of Leos Janacek?

I think you wrong me! I am happy to express definitive conclusions of my own--in fact I believe it's better if scholars 'don't sit on the fence' too much but instead take up bold positions--this is what I will be doing here, with many suggestions and views which I know will be subjective, and not ones that everyone will agree with. What I present in the book will be my best guesses, based on my interpretation of the materials to hand. But I know that other people might very well interpret those same materials rather differently and come to very different (and equally valid) conclusions. So I hope that what I present will be exhaustive and definitive--as far as I can make it--but I also know that this isn't the last that will be heard on the subject. There will be a new generation of Janacek scholars, keen to make their own contributions. I hope only that they will find my assembly of information useful and my account of Janacek's life and work stimulating.

What will follow after the Janacek book? What are your future plans?

As for what next, well I've been writing working on the factographical basis for this book for fifteen years, and writing it for four years. I think I deserve a rest!

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In the context of the book on Czech opera you said that systematic grasp of the theme has to be preceded by developing a perfect understanding of it. How has you view of Leos Janacek as a man developed after your detailed study of his work and life?

I don't think my estimation of Janacek's works has changed much, though I do understand much more than I did about, say, the various versions of Jenufa, including the 1904 version (which will be heard again in a few months in Warsaw in a version reconstructed by my former student Mark Audus). There are a few of Janacek's smaller works which I have got to know better, and perhaps like better. But the works I considered 'great' twenty years ago, have not changed in my estimation.

As for his personality, the big revelations came more than ten years ago when translating his letters to Kamila Stosslova. Some people ask me what I felt about Janacek after translating Zdenka's memoirs. Her memoirs are a useful source, and good to have 'in the open' (having been a shadowy presence in Helfert and Vogel) but one needs to take it with a pinch of salt. It is quite clear that with Janacek dead, Zdenka was attempting to give her side of the story, and to show herself in the very best light. So I don't think he is, for instance, necessarily as cruel as how he sometimes appears, seen through Zdenka's eyes.

The Janacek revealed in his Kamila letters helps to explain why he was such a marvellous opera composer. It may seem an odd comparison to make, but Mozart--another of the great opera composers of all time--similarly wrote wonderfully entertaining, spontaneous and emotional letters. Compare Mozart's to Haydn's letter (with their preoccupation with facts, figures and commodities and very seldom with gossip and people) and one understand immediately why Haydn's huge musical talents were best utilized in writing symphonies and string quartets rather than operas.

Much more important and reliable, I think, in coming to a view of Janacek, are his letters to Kamila. They are so spontaneous--the very opposite of letters which have been laboriously drafted, corrected and rewritten--and reveal so much of himself. There can't be many men of his time and class who are quite so much at ease in revealing their emotions, which in Janacek's case were always near the surface. The letters are the great gift he left to his biographers, and will occupy psychologists and biographers for many years to come.

Do you regard it as an advantage that you're not Czech? Does it give you a certain distance and objectivity of view?

Yes and no. One of my Czech friends, perhaps teasingly, said I would never really understand Czech matters because I didn't hear Czech fairy stories when I was a little boy And there is some truth in this: there are some things that are absorbed so naturally within a culture that no foreigner, however curious, will be able to fathom them completely. But on the other hand, this realization does help me to be more aware, to ask naive questions which, however stupid they sound to native Czechs, may touch upon important matters that are taken for granted by Czechs and thus that they aren't expressed. In the end, a little distance can be beneficial.

This goes particularly for music and musicians which in Czech culture occupy a very special position--much more so than in English culture. We English are of course interested in our cultural and historical giants, but we are happy to show them 'warts and all' (This is a famous quotation from our Republican leader Oliver Cromwell, who gave this instruction to a painter: the painter should not try and make him look more attractive but show him exactly as he was). In Czech culture there is sometime a tendency to suppress unpleasant facts about cultural giants: for instance, until recently there was much mystification about Smetana's illness and death; there is still no complete edition of letters and no edition at all of his diaries, presumably because of the inconvenient fact that they are often written in German.

Janacek has suffered a little bit from this sort of glorification, but it is much to the credit of people such as Svatava Pribanova, that after a long period where the most important biographical source for Janacek's life was suppressed, a superb and comprehensive edition of all Janacek's letters to Kamila Stosslova now exists which indeed shows him 'warts and all.'

I remember once when I was doing some research in the Divadelni ustav in Prague for my Czech opera book, I was accosted by one of the employees there and cross-examined about why I was writing the book and in particular who was advising me. She was concerned, she said, that without Czech assistance I would not 'get the proportions right'. I remember being very cross at the time about this! The last thing I wanted to do was to 'get the proportions right', if that meant slavishly following some Czech model, however well-informed. It seemed important for me to produce my own 'proportions' and to examine areas that might have been neglected. In this particular case, it meant seeing Smetana in a wider national context (and thus taking the operas of Sebor, Bendl and Rozkosny more seriously than, say, Nejedly did). It also means seeing Smetana as any other world composer of his time, so that I could discern, say, Italianate formal structures such as largo concertato and cantabile-cabaletta forms in some of Smetana's operas. So yes, in the end, I think it's an advantage that I'm not a Czech. I can't pretend, however, that what I have to say will be more 'objective'--merely different.

Janacek is very popular in the world at large. Why do you think that in the Czech Republic, on the other hand, Janacek's operas play to half-empty theatres?

One easy answer lies in the difference between a repertory system and a stagione system. Don't think that Janacek is played night after night in Britain. He isn't, What usually happens is that an opera company will decide to stage, say, five performances of From the House of the Dead in a particular season. The dates will be calculated and known well in advance, and maybe publicized six months ahead. So I know that if I want to see the opera I will have five chances. And I make sure I do. Other Janacek enthusiasts will do so also, some coming from many miles away if they know about the event sufficiently in advance. It needs much thinking ahead, and lots of money spent on publicity. What I found when I lived in Brno for a year (in 1966-7) was that the opera schedules were advertised only a month ahead at the most and one had no idea how many performances of a work might be given over the whole season. Sometimes an isolated performance of From the House of the Dead was advertised and sometimes I wouldn't go since I assumed it might come back again some time during the season on a more convenient evening. I ended up not making an effort to see things that I ought to have done. A repertory system can make an audience a little lazy.

I also think that the dead weight of tradition also doesn't help at times. We have, for instance, many productions of The Bartered Bride in Britain. None of them are 'traditional', i.e. with all the folk costumes and all the trimmings which are often an important part of Czech sentimental nationalism. In Britain we play The Bartered Bride without any trace of Czech nationalism, and instead consider it as a human story, and find interesting psychological depths in a work that the Czech productions I have seen seem unaware of. A tradition, however valuable, can have a deadening effect in excluding other aspects: imagination in particular. When I last saw Liska Bystrouska in Brno it was one that the same producer had done many times before. And it showed--a dull and predictable affair which had not an ounce of theatrical flair, and this in an opera that provides some of the most wonderful opportunities for interesting, witty and imaginative stagings. One has to remember that in the end opera is merely a type of entertainment. If audiences don't think they are going to be entertained, and if they are going purely out of a sense of duty--rather than for an exciting theatrical experience--they probably won't go.

The other thing I should say is that one reason why Janacek has done so well in Britain has been the 'outreach' programmes of various theatres. When Welsh National Opera did their Janacek cycle with Scottish Opera in the 1980s, they knew that they were introducing operas to audiences which knew almost nothing about the composer. So wherever the operas toured (and both companies were 'touring companies', taking their productions to many towns in Wales, Scotland and England), they prepared the way with extensive publicity and with 'workshops', in which singers, the producer, the conductor and Janacek experts would discuss a particular Janacek opera and perform scenes from it, with many live examples in an attempt to familiarize audiences with it. Even in recent years when the Royal Opera House in London has performed Janacek operas, it has been careful to organize 'study days' devoted entirely to these works, and in particular try and reach out to new audiences, especially younger ones.

Czechs of course will always have one wonderful advantage in that native singers can sing Janacek's operas in their onginal language to an audience that understands it. We have to settle for translations (which will always be a compromise) or sing them in a language that the audience does not understand and which the singers sometimes don't either.

Having dealt with Janacek all your professional life do you feel you have any understanding of how Janacek organized his life, and what effect did this have on his music?

Going through Janacek's life year by year, although labour-intensive, has been very rewarding. By assembling all the documents in a strictly chronological order, and working through the information they provide I have been able to build up a day-to-day picture that has yielded some very interesting insights. For me the most fascinating has been Janacek's organization of his working life, working in little bursts to deadlines, followed by rest periods (such as trips to Prague, or to see Kamila). In order to achieve so much in his final years, he needed routines, and I don't think until I put all this information together I was sufficiently aware of them. This not only helps on understand how Janacek was able to do all that he did, but also variations in the routines provide a useful tool for discovering when things weren't going so well. The pattern of his writing The Makropulos Affair are a case in point. He began it impulsively, with hardly a break before finishing his previous opera, but there are some very odd gaps both in composition and later in revising them that seem to me to suggest real compositional (or maybe psychological) problems with the opera. I was fascinated to see how when asked by Universal Edition for the dates of composition, Janacek clearly lied about when he began it, suggesting a much later date (by which time he had already composed two acts). Why should he do this? Admittedly, he had a terrible memory for such things, but such an enormous discrepancy is significant.

You are a scholar who surrounds himself with Janacek's things in your private life. Do you have his photograph hanging on your wall?

For many years I have had two photographs in my study: one is of Janacek standing outside his house and the other is of a group of workers from the Janacek archives standing in a similar position. I am also in this picture, taken in the depth of winter in January 1969, at the end of my initial researches and before I returned to Africa for a while. It was a reminder of the years that I had worked in the archive, of the friends I had made there, and of the fact that for a while I belonged to a community working in the very place where Janacek himself had lived and worked. More recently Jiri and Sarka Zahradka gave me a photograph--one of their clever collages--which enterprisingly captures Janacek and me together. What is particularly amusing is that there I am, looking on with adoration at the composer, bursting with enthusiasm, while Janacek is looking disdainfully in quite the opposite direction. Now, what am I to make of that?!

The text came out in Czech in a profile edition of the music revue Opus musicum 1/2004 devoted to Leos Janacek.