For orchestra
Duration: 25 minutes
Music: Leo� Jan�ček (Composed 1926)
Premiered: Prague 26/6/1926

Catalogue Number: JW VI/18


Jan�ček�s Sinfonietta was written in the spring of 1926, shortly after The Makropulos Case had been completed and just before work began on The Glagolitic Mass. Whilst the pressures of Jan�ček�s domestic situation and his unrequited passion for St�sslov� tinged many of his works with longing and melancholy, the mood of the Sinfonietta is largely celebratory. Jan�ček wrote to Kamila St�sslov� in 1926 to say that he was working on a �nice little Sinfonietta with fanfares�, which had been inspired by a trip he had taken to see St�sslov� in her home-town of P�sek. There he had heard a rather elaborately dressed military band playing patriotic marches � a story endorsed by his friend Cyril Vymetal. Whatever its inspiration, the work was written with great speed between March and May of 1926, and although Jan�ček had wrestled with writing a symphony in 1923 (the unfinished �Danube� Symphony), this work, as indicated by its diminutive title, was much lighter in tone, with its quirky sounds and violently contrasted sections. It was a popular work from the outset; following its Prague premiere in June 1926 it was performed in New York, Berlin and Brno in 1927, before being heard in London, Vienna and Dresden in 1928, the year of Jan�ček�s death.

Although the Sinfonietta has some basis in military band sounds, during the premiere Jan�ček came up with titles for the individual movements, which commemorated different parts of his adopted home town of Brno. The first movement continued to be titled simply �Fanfares�. The second movement, however, was named after the �pilberk Castle, on top of one of the hills in the city � a notorious Hapsburg prison � perhaps because of the odd macabre quality of the music. The third movement, full of longing before breaking out in joyful jolts, was named after the Queens Monastery, where Jan�ček was sent for his education at the age of 11. The fourth movement is called �the Street� and the final movement named after the Town Hall. In fact, Jan�ček went as far as to write a piece in December 1927 for the popular daily paper, Lidov� noviny, called �Moje město� (�My Town�), commemorating the town in relation to his new work.

And whilst the score is extremely treacherous for the orchestra (one flautist at the premiere insisted to Jan�ček that the notes were unplayable), the sense of celebration, at the independence of his country and perhaps at his own long-earned acceptance as a composer both there and abroad, is palpable.


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