For tenor, chorus, harp and organ
Duration: 20 minutes
Music: Leo� Jan�ček
(Composed 1901, revised 1906)
Text: from St. Matthew's Gospel
Premiered: Brno, 15/6/1901
(revised version: Prague 18/11/1906)

Catalogue Number: JW IV/29

From the regular services in the small church at Hukvaldy and in neighbouring Rychaltice (where a young Jan�ček could be heard beating the timpani on Easter Sunday), to the grander surroundings of the Augustinian Monastery in Brno, where Jan�ček was sent as an 11 year old boy, liturgical music formed the basis of his musical education. In 1872, at the age of 18, Jan�ček was made deputy choirmaster at the Monastery, taking the choristers for their daily practice; among them was Alfons Mucha, the future leading light of Art Nouveau. The young composer was highly precocious and quickly took to writing his own music for the liturgy. Although his education in a strict liturgical environment fed Jan�ček�s subsequent �religious� works � the young Rychaltice timpanist beating his way all the way through to the Glagolitic Mass � later settings were largely performed away from the church services, in the concert vein of Verdi�s Requiem.�

This setting of the words �Christ himself taught us� was itself written for non-liturgical circumstances. The Polish painter J�zef Męcina-Krzesz (1860-1924) produced a series of eight paintings, taking as their inspiration the familiar words from Matthew�s Gospel. The paintings were commissioned by the Austrian Ministry for Education and were displayed both in Vienna and in Warsaw. At the time of the Warsaw exhibition in 1899 the local journal Tygodnik ilustrowany published an article about the paintings, accompanied by black and white reproductions. Although the paintings themselves never reached Brno, the Women�s shelter there, in which both Zdenka and Olga Jan�čkova, the composer�s wife and daughter, were involved, had a copy of the Warsaw journal. The paintings were the inspiration for an odd �performance� of the �Our Father� in honour of the shelter, where music (provided by Zdenka�s obliging husband) was interspersed with tableaux vivants, depicting the images from the paintings. It was performed as such in 1901 by an amateur theatre group at the National Theatre (the small converted dance hall in which both Jan�ček�s second opera The Beginning of a Romance and Jenůfa were first performed). �

The work was revised in 1906, changing the accompaniment from either piano or harmonium (though sometimes performed with both) to the present harp and organ textures. The Brno version of 1901 had clear segregations between the various sections in which the tableaux vivants were performed (though Jan�ček had condensed the original eight scenes to five); the version performed at the Rudolfinum in Prague in 1906, and as heard tonight, was in one movement. Throughout his setting of the prayer Jan�ček juxtaposes zeal with calm. An unsettled, rhythmically ambiguous opening introduces a hushed and mantra-like canon. Its apparent sombreness is enlivened with a surprising harmonic lurch for an even more muted statement of the opening theme. The tenor soloist�s fervent arietta (�thy kingdom come�) in the second section is joined by a strident assertion from the chorus. The tenor sings a sighing setting of �thy will be done� in B flat minor, against which a melancholic counter subject sounds in the organ. The chorus repeat the tenor soloist�s words in full. Fervour returns with �give us this day our daily bread�, reminiscent of the shouts of �tu ad dexteram� from Berlioz�s Te Deum. The triadic exuberance and demands for �chl�b� (Czech for �bread�) contrast with the melancholy of �and forgive us our trespasses�, the choruses mutterings prefiguring the repeated �Věruju� (I believe) in the Creed of the Glagolitic Mass. The impassioned nature of that later work is certainly present in the final section of this setting of the �Our Father�, as full organ and grinding ostinati rush towards roaring �Amens�.

Programme note written for performance at the BBC Proms 2004 on the 21 August 2004�(Proms publications edited by Mark Pappenheim)


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