,,/ had in mind a miserable woman, suffering,

beaten, wretched, like the great Russian

author Tolstoy wrote about in his Kreutzer
Sonata."

Leo~ Janacek in a letter to Kamila Stêisslova

of 14 October 1924.

In October 1923, sixty nine year old Leo~ Janacek, inspired and requested by the
famous Bohemian Quartet, decided to write the first of his two late programme
quartets, which immediately took their place among leading quartet works of ail
times. Between 30 October and 7 N ovember 1923, in Brno, Janacek's ,,Quartet based
on L. N. Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata", and dedicated to the Bohemian Quartet, was
written.
In view of the intrinsic dramatic quality of Janacek's music, in view of the known
intensive literary nature of many of his works and Janacek's unusually strong
inclination to Russian 19th century psychologicizing literature, it is no surprise to
discover that in his first chamber composition of his last and culminating period he
returned once again to a literary theme which he had expressed in music
in 1908/9 with two versions of a piano trio (whereabouts unknown) . (Janacek, 1924:
"The quartet came into being based on several of its ideas.")
But why the "Kreutzer Sonata"? This story by Tolstoy, whose mercilessly strong
condemnation of the institution of marriage shook the minds and perhaps even the
sensibilities of several generations, was a provocation to Janacek to set to music.
Centred in the tragic tale of the marriage of the despotic, jealous Pozdnyshev, were
a number of basic themes with which Janacek came to grips over de cades. Love and
jealousy, the effect of music on the senses and acts of man, crime and punishment, the
jealous man's ail too late realization of what he had done and, primarily, the cruel
constraints on human liberty, the false charges that to the murder of the woman-
-sufferer ...
Janacek approached Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata" not to illustrate it in music as
a story about a jealous murder, not to depict the tragic confrontation between 'the
emptiness of mere sexuality and the emotional wealth of music, not to meditate
musically over Tolstoy's critical philosophy or to compose several musical
impressions from the story. No, Janacek protested! Without violating the basic
dramatic foundation of the tale, without avoiding the catastrophic foundation of
the story, without avoiding the catastrophic culmination of the narrative itself, he
conceived his "Quartet based on the Kreutzer Sonata" as a unified, intact,
psychological drama.*) Unlike Tolstoy, Janacek cornes forward in defence ofwomen
and their rights. Among the most remarkable features of Janacek's musical idiom
is that directly from the music of his quartet we trace the main outlines of the story,
follow the tale as it unfolds, and even discover the degree of Janacek's ideological
deviation from Tolstov's conception.
The first movement of the quartet is the exposition of the drama. Janacek is painting
portraits. His view, concentrated on "compassion for the miserable, postrate female
being", chiefly follows the central character (in bars 1-45, specially 38-45) and her
transformations.
The second movement - a perpeteia. Smartly bounding into the action is the
cosmopolitan violinist, the future "seducer" (bars 1-47). The spine-chilling furtive
trembling of the music tells of the fatéful encounter (bars 48-61 ), the first admissions
of love are heard (bar 68 and f.), the tension increases. The provocative fourth , the
musical form of a manifestation of love (in bars 185-194 and particularly in
195-200), forebodes the future, tragic end.
The third movement-the crisis. The power of the music of Beethoven'_s Kreutz~r
Sonata (cf. specially bars 8-9) unleashes the passion: love in the woman, Jealousy m

• This is strongly aflirmed in a note sent lrom Jose! Ktenek 10 the editor, "that Janéfe k wanted absolutc quiet
betwcen the movtmenu, no tuning, a pause that would be just slightly more than the normal general pauses.
He simply wanted not to have anything d1sturb the dramatic cadence or the work"

XIII
 the husband. In the introductory passage of the movement (bars 1-34) there is a rapid
accumulation of merciiess onslaugttts of wild figuration, Janacek's famed short
rhythmical passages, called "scasovka", then turning into the drastic music of
accusations and revenge accompanied by sobbing (Vivo, bars 35-39). A transfor-
mation (Andante) . The wretched woman, after pitiful sighs (bars 60-66), flees to
her vision of love, now expanded (bars 83 to 88) to the · breadth of a hymn.
The fourth movement. The plaintive and moving monologue of the tormented
woman introduces the last act of the tragedy, which reaches its climax for Janacek not
in the terrible d~g but in the purified awakening of the murderer over his dying
victim: "I looked ... at her bruised disfigured face , and for the first time I forgot
myself, my rights, my pride and for the first time saw a human being in her.*) And so
insignificant did ail that had offended me, ail my jealousy, appear, and so important
what I had done, that I wished to fall with my face to her hand, and say: 'Forgive me',
but dared not do so." (Tolstoy)
Jamicek's Maestoso rapturously expresses in music (bars 121-126) the catharsis,
equal to the magnificent conclusions of his operas, returning human dignity not just
to the victim but to the penitant. From here the path Ieads directly to the climatic
expressions of Janacek's humanism, particularly to his last opera "From the House
of the Dead".
But Janacek, the intrepid fighter for human freedorn, goes even further in his
quartet Whereas Tolstoy in the "Kreutzer Sonata" actually denies the very existence
of love and basically condemns marriage as a dangerous illusion, for Janacek love is
one of the greatest and highest values and the most precious gift of human life,
and a marr~ase which is the prison of emotions is an immoral one.
If, at the close of the quartet, Jariâcek is fully aroused ("we must defend the
unyoking of womanhood"), with the imposingly majectic motif of the denunciation
(from bar 170), the very motif whose cruel cries not long before (in bars 115-118)
were like a signal to murder, then he leave us in no doubt that from Tolstoy's
nameless "Guilty One" another of Janacek's characters of morally strong women-
-heroines has been born. And that with her dying, Janacek has lovingly taken his
farewell, as he did with his other Katya. Katy·a•s "love, too, went another way and it
was a great, a beautiful love . . ." (from Janacek's letter to Kamila Stôsslova of
.25 February 1922).
The urgency of Janacek's human testimony, clearly evident from the music and
from his remarks in the Russian edition of Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata", is
overpowered by the elemental consistency of Jandéek's creative canon in which
everything, that is the subject, the story, the elements and the media of musical
speech, is subordinated to the ideas and irrepressibly forges into a synthesis, perfect
in shape, and a highly artistic entity. It is within the bounds of Janacek's human
participation and in the enormity of his experience in the field of dramatic music that
we must seek the source of the extraordinarily pure musical values of his First Quartet
The birth and fate of this very unusual Janacek composition are memorably linked
with inner friendship of two great Czech musicians. A deep compassion for ail who
suffer brought the composer Suk (1874/1935) atone time closer to Janacek through
the music of Jenufa (Her Foster-daughter). And it cetrainly was Suk's moving,
moumful conception of Janacek's First Quartet that enthused the author so when
he finally heard his work in an ardent perfomance of it by the Bohemian Quartet
(1892-1933) , a week before its premiere. (Members of the Bohemian Quartet were
Karel Hoffmann, Josef Suk, Jiff Herold, and Ladislav Zelenka- and they played it on
14 October 1924, in Prague, in the Mozarteum at a concert of the Association for
Mod~m Music). Janacek was so carried away at the time that he was not bothered by
the d1fferences not only of Suk's interpretation but also of his tonal and instrumental
changes. Janacek's work had been adapted to Suk's softer and, musically, more
impre_ssio~istic feeli~gs, and to the decidedly romanticizing and tonally enticingly
beaubful mterpretabonal style of this world famous ensemble. The extent of Suk's
changes were recognized by Janacek only when other interpreters played the
quartet in his presence from printed notes - that is in the style of Suk's basic
interpretational and instrumental revision. Then Janacek hastened to carry out (for
instance in London, in May 1926, several dafS alter the Bohemian Quartet had

• Jan6œk underlined these word1 wilh red pencil.

XIV
introduced it there) in the printed material a number of corrections a nd mainly to
insist on his tempo arrangements, enabling the structure of the work dto ~ppear ~s
a unified, scaled, dramatic whole. Janacek clarified and elaborate t e d~âogt~
component, so important for the full impact of the work, but unfortun~te IY 1 no
write in down until after a number of rehearsals with the young Moravian Qua~te!,
led by Janaèek's favourite violinist Prof. Frant. Kudlaèek (2nd violinist Jan Kuc ar,
from the end of the year Jos. Jedlicka, Jos. Trkan, Jos. Krene~) - Janac~k, _who
otherwise welcomed the most diverse sensitive impretations of h1S-works, tnSIS ted
in the case of the First Quartet on his own tempo and performance ideas, whic?
became established in the autumn of 1924 as the authentic model. Janaèek saw to tt
at once (in Brno, in December 1924) that is was heard by the Bohemian Quartet, and
followed its impact at a number of concerts of the Moravian Quartet. He expressed
his satisfaction an.d gratitude even in writing, first in the warm note to F_r. KudMèek
of 9 February 1925, and then three months before his death (at a t1me h~ had
entrusted the Moravian Quartet with his musical will, the Second Quartet "lnt1mate
Letters") in the well-known letter of 18 May 1928 about the Moravian Quartet. He
wrote ... "They play my work, the String Quartet inspired by Tolstoy's Kreutzer
Sonata, as I would have wished it played, just as I felt every tone ; just as note after
note fell smouldering from my pen, so in their interpretation every tone has
a glowing resonance".
And how bitter was Janaèek's disappointment when, in a correct perfomance of
this, his chamber drama, by the Woodhouse Quartet " .. . fear was not frightened ,
passion did not overflow" .
After all, "the greatest beauty of tone makes one feel cold if the artist does not have
within him the ability to bend-but not to break, to boil up-but not to boil over, to be
dying-but no to die, to set aflame-but not to bum out, to hasten-but not to
exaggerate" (L. Janaèek 10 June 1926).
This edition, whose nearly twenty years of theoretical and interpretational
preparations are discussed in the editor's notes, therefore attempts to reconstruct as
faithfully as possible Janticek's final ideas about the work. This edition is supported
by the Smetana and Janaèek Quartets, which have publicly recreated both Janaèek
quartets more than 1800 times. Of the founding members of the one-time Moravian
Quartet who lived to see the completion of the preparations of this edition, concert
master Jos. Krenek {whom we must gratefully thank for the invaluable information be
provided and the much patient checking he did of the difficult preparatory work to
obtain the restitution of tempi and specially of metronome markings) explicity
regards this edition as the authentic one.

Prague, December 1973. Milan ~kampa

EDITOR'S NOTES

This edition of Janaèek's first quartet, so very different from preceding editions
the light of day in ~esponse _to a need, primarily of interpreters, to have a reliableb::
for the study of th1s exceptional work. Attempts to issue critical editions of Janaè k'
compositions are, as we know, very difficult This time the task is even more a d e s
because 1t · 1s
· necessary t o rem.o ve from Janau;
.cx-k's metronome readings-the s r I uous d
• · · th' • • o e an
simply pre1!mmary ones m 1s compos1tion-thos_e which clearly prevent a basic
understandmg of the character and cadence of the mdividual movements d ale
it impossible for interpreters, particularly those who are meticulously fa·~~ 1 1~ e
author's writing, to fulfil Janaèek'_s desire to have the music sound as a gra ded~ s~l~
entity. It should be protected agamst those metronome markings whi·ch
. · h · h . are an acute
danger threatenmg w at ts mu~ _more essential for any sensitive interpretation than
a series of er~ors and contrad1~ttons (even those in ~hich the place an·d. length of
the tones are mvolved), and whtch have accumulated m the almost too-en b d
layers of notation am~ng Janaèe~'s first draft {his sole hand-written, contf:: e~ï
only provisio_naJ-sty_h_zed notation of the composition) and the printed m~~e:s
used for prev1ous ed1tions.