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We are used to seeing Leos Janacek as a composer who had a highly distinctive and positive attitude to folk culture. Sometimes, however, the influence of folk lore on composers at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries has been exaggerated and we forget that there has always been an inter-relationship, admittedly sometimes closer and sometimes looser, between what is known as serious (classical) music and folk music. The precursors of the so-called avant garde clearly strengthened this relationship and Janacek's contemporaries simply emphasised the trend.--as one example to stand for all we shall mention Vitezslav Novak and his admiring love for Moravian folk songs. Elsewhere in the world we find striking parallels: Maurice Ravel was enchanted by Basque folklore, Bela Bartok made a name as collector, composer and performer, and the most frequently performed part of Igor Stravinsky's legacy is precisely from his folklore period. Some members of Janacek generation seem to have as it were sacrificed their potential careers as composers and chosen the collection of folk songs as their main activity--remarkably, Ludvik Kuba even took this work further than the frontiers of the Bohemian Lands. Where should we place Leos Janacek in this context?

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In his early childhood he could not have fully developed a response to folk music since at this stage he had neither time nor space for it. His father was an undoubted authority on music in the church, but it is hard to guess the extent to which the family followed the musical performances of the other inhabitants of Hukvaldy. At eight, Leos entered the Old Brno Monastery and his main employment there was church music. Perhaps only a holiday visit to South Moravian Vnorovy (Znorovy) to his uncle, the priest Jan Janacek, gave him a chance to encounter live folk music. But in his letters he never mentioned it, any more than he did in his famous...

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