It would be interesting to examine Janaceks influences, since far more than many other composers, his life and and work are deeply entwined. The Second String Quartet (1928) called the 'Intimate Letters' summarized Janaceks relationship with Kamila Stosslova. He wrote to her daily for 11 years though only some 700 letters survive, so we shall never know the real extent of their relationship. He poured out his innermost thoughts to her, some fairly explicit, even though she didn't like music, probably didn't understand him and in later years she and her husband were not averse to exploiting his fame and wealth. However, like many of his previous mistresses, she had what his wife called Junoaugen, officially translated as 'Ox-eyed Hera' - cow eyes! Dark, gypsy like and strong, she symbolised for him a sensuality and wildness that defied conventional restraints. The First String Quartet, is based on Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, and although it's non vocal, it is in effect a drama without words. Why this obsession with infidelity? It runs like a recurrent theme in nearly all Janaceks work, like the image of the Danube. Janacek had turned against his child bride (blonde) while still on honeymoon and treated her and her family with extreme callousness. His numerous extra marital affairs were always with married, though independent, women and he himself pulled back from the threshold of divorce several times. The women in Janaceks work have 'colourful' sides - Jenufa has an illegitimate child and Elina Makropulous has 20! The women who don't give in to this end up warped like the virtuous Kabanicha. The men don't come out well: Laca's a wimp, and the brutish Dikoj crumbles. However, the peasant boy in The Diary of One Who Disappeared completely reverses the 'seduced and abandoned' cliche - he's the one who gets taken against his will, but to his credit, embraces freedom and rebellion. It's as if Janacek needed the symbol of people breaking out of repression to liberate the floodgates of his own creativity. Another dominant influence is that of folk song. Were there other composers at his time who spent as much time in the field collecting folk songs and immersing in folk culture? What about Dvorak, Martinu, and others? I suspect RVW and Butterworth aren't in the same league. For people of Janaceks time and position, nationalism wasn't something xenophobic but a form of cultural survival. No surprise that his popularity came with the birth of the Czech state. Moravian folksongs, according to Mirka Zemanova, (2002) 'are much freer and more irregular in their metrical and rhythmic structure, and more varied in their choice of melodic intervals: they also make liberal use of minor and modal scales. The character of these modes gives the music its distinctive sound, more exotic to western ears than a melody in a major scale, whenever Moravian folk songs do not employ modes, they frequently modulate to quite remote keys'. Janacek believed that speech and music were related, and developed a system of notation which expressed the rhythm and cadence of speech. Not only did he collect folksong, dance and antique embroideries but also patterns of speech. He even notated animal and bird sounds. Currently I'm listening to the choral songs, the Nursery Rhymes, Kaspar Rucky, the Wolfs Tracks and so on, and I imagine that they reflect the ebb and flow of speech, the way themes are repeated with variation, exposition and reiteration, and little unexpected touches popping up, like the strange flute like thing in the Hradcany Songs. They are so different, but sound nothing like kitschy imitation folksong. Indeed, these patterns seem also to haunt the Moravian Songs for piano. Perhaps other works? Few of us are Moravian speakers so we can only wonder how much the music reflects the nuances of language: but since we have no idea what the words mean, perhaps we can think of them as a kind of music with a different logic? Anne Ozorio <[log in to unmask]>