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Life and work or work and life or just work?!?

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The title I have chosen expresses the first line of thought that occur$ to the reader of Tyrrell's massive monograph, in my view, we would be hard put to it to find in current world musicology a more detailed, precise and perfect conception for the history of the music of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a more comprehensive, precise and perfect conception than Tyrrell's.

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After the definitely unsuccessful post-modernist "synthesis" by Meinhard Saremba (Leos Janacek. Zeit-Leben-Werk-Wirkung. Barenreiter Kastel-Basel-London-N.Y.-Prag 2001), to mention one of the most recent attempts at a "major" Janacek monograph, Tyrrell is something quite different, offering as he does the biggest and most detailed academic analysis to date of Janacek's life, compositional methods and artistic character. So much is evident after only a quick look at both volumes. Our purpose here is to try and set the monograph in the Janacekian context and above all to offer some brief comments on its methodological premises. After Max Brod, whose long essay written while the composer was still alive was the first of a series of Janacek monographs, the most valuable is definitely Helfert's unfinished work (Leos Janacek. Obraz zivotniho a umeleckeho boje. 1. V poutech tradice [Leos Janacek. The picture of a struggle in life and art. I. In the fetters of tradition]. Brno 1939). Helfert's approach was informed by the spirit of a modernised historical positivism, and aimed to explain Janacek's personality in terms of his environment and historical situation. The post-war period saw a series of other monographs (Jaroslav Vogel, Jan Racek, Hanns Hollander and many others), in all cases academic biographical accounts more or less interlarded with consideration of the music depending on the musicality of the authors (Vogel and Hollander are definitely superior to the other attempts of the time). Subsequently the further development of musicological production showed a move in the direction of problem-orientated analysis; attention was shifting from the life to the work. In Czech musicology this process culminated in a Smetana monograph that expressed its academic credo in its title Dilo a zivot Bedricha Smetany [The Works and Life of Bedrich Smetana], when this new approach was applied particularly by Jaroslav Jiranek and Jaroslav Smolka, and then equally by Karel Janecek. Independent of this methodologically and academically fruitful shift, we find attempts to produce monographic views of part of the composer's output or even individual works in the Janacek literature as well. Bohumir Stedron reconstructed the genesis of Jenufa and the English musicologist Paul Wingfield wrote a book about the Glagolitic Mass. Both before and after, a series of other "work-orientated" essays and books came out. The original Helfertian or more precisely historical positivist approach to academic narrative, i.e. a chronological account with note taken of the fundamental results of stylistic and structural phenomena continued--authors often returned to it who in other cases adopted an analytical view. Here...