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Janacek: A Composer''s Life. .(Book Review)-

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Janacek: A Composer's Life. By Mirka Zemanova. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002. [xiv, 352 p. ISBN 1-555-53549-6. $35.] Illustrations, bibliography, index.

In the introduction to her new biography of Leos Janacek, Mirka Zemanova states that she has three goals: (1) to describe Janacek's life for the general reader; (2) to lead the listener familiar with some of Janacek's output to additional works; and (3) to provide new material in English for scholars and serious students (p. 1). She has succeeded in each of these tasks. Zemanova's Janacek contains the most detailed account of Janacek's personal life available in English, and draws on many documents that are either unpublished or have not been previously published in English. Janacek, particularly as a young man, is vividly depicted, often in fresh anecdotes. The images of the composer as a student in Leipzig, pulling the petals from a cabbage rose sent by his fiancee Zdenka, counting the days until he would see her again (p. 35), or attending a masked ball dressed as Faust with Zdenka on his arm in the guise of Marguerite (pp. 41-42) are happy additions to the literature.

The standard biography of Janacek is Jaroslav Vogel's Janacek: A Biography, (rev. ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 1981). Vogel's book is constructed around Janacek's works, containing detailed discussions of even minor...

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