Listening Recommendation: Glagolitic Mass by Leos Janacek

Hi all,

Here's this week's listening recommendation.

Composer Leoš Janáček (1854 - 1928) was born in Northern Moravia (in modern day Czech Republic). Although known mostly for his operas, Janacek also wrote a number of anthems and choral works. His works in general are highly challenging, in both technical aspects - rhythm, pitch, harmony (dissonance, unorthodox chord spacings) , keys (modal, major/minor) and musically (in corporation of pitch contour, inflections of Czech speech, and feeling that slight sense of minimalism in his works).

Despite being an atheist, he composed one of the most highly-acclaimed choral works in the 20th century - the Glagolitic Mass. The setting was chiefly, non-liturgical, but used an Old Church Slavonic text (the term Glagolitic comes from the Glagolitic alphabet, the earliest alphabet used by the Slavs, and not to the texts used by the mass, as Janacek seems to have believed) to which a 8-movement work was structured around.

It begins and closes with triumphant fanfares dominated by the brass. In between these sections lies particularly vibrant and rhythmic writing for voices (soloists as well as choir). Before the closing Intrada, Janáček introduces a dramatic organ solo of considerable originality -- a perpetuo moto of wild energy.

Janacek attributes its conception to an electrical storm he witnessed. "It grows darker and darker. Already I am looking into the black night; flashes of lightning cut through it. I switch on the flickering electric light on the high ceiling. I sketch nothing more than the quiet motive of a desperate frame of mind to the words ‘Gospodi pomiluj’ [Love have mercy]. Nothing more than the joyous shout ‘Slava, Slava!"

Listen to see whether you can visualise the imagery Janacek had in this masterpiece.