Janacek’s Goodnight
Nov 28th, 2008 by oldfogey
Leos Janacek was one of the most original of late nineteenth and early twentieth century composers. His music lies somewhat outside the conventional path of modern European music. It’s modernity, if that is the right word, comes not from his adherence to some overarching musical ideology, like that of Schoenberg, Webern or Boulez, but more out of his interest in the detailed and specific - the sounds of water, of birds, of speech - in accents and sounds rather than semantics - all of which are reflected in his work. Nor does he seem to have been interested in musical virtuosity, or instrumentalism for its own sake. All his music seems to draw on, and refers back to, a wider understanding of life than just music. I can’t think of anyone who has been quite like him - Oliver Messiaen is the closest and even he isn’t very close.
His collection of short piano pieces, ‘Along an Overgrown Path’, each with touching little titles (’Our Evenings’, ‘A blown away leaf’, ‘They chattered like swallows’) is full of an intense nostalgic longing for his childhood home in Moravia. It was also written in the shadow of the death, aged 20, of his daughter Olga, to whom he was deeply attached, and a deep vein of melancholy permeates them all.
The piece called ‘Goodnight’ is one of the most haunting. It starts with a little four note figure - crochet, two quavers, crochet - high up on the piano, sounding on two notes only. It’s like a distant bell sounding, or a call across a river. The figure is repeated throughout the four minutes or so of the piece, gradually and slowly moving downwards until, at the end it sounds in the bass. It’s as if it was subsiding through consciousness into sleep - and as the final four notes sound, perhaps into that final sleep into which Olga, at long last, subsided - leaving Janacek alone.
The pianist is Thomas Hlawatsch.
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