Janacek

I once had, a long time ago when I was a student, a terrible argument with a man who knew more about music than I did and so he won the argument. It was over Janacek's opera "Jenufa".
Now, what I know about opera can be written on a single piece of notepaper but I had been to see the opera and I hadn't liked it. This music professor (something like that) had a great knowledge of the composer and his opera and proceeded to lambast me with arguments, with facts and opinions. Opinions which I could not contest through lack of knowledge.
I had merely said that I thought "Jenufa" was a silly work - the story I meant; the music was to me a bit atonal - "modern".
Ever since that encounter I have had a deep disliking of anything written by Janacek. I sort of refuse to listen to his music, saying to myself, after a few bars, "rubbish".It's as if I am all the time trying to prove that I had been right in my contention that the opera was no good.
The opera is about a young woman, Jenufa, who gets herself pregnant; her mother decides that this shame is unliveable with and she throws the baby into the icy river. The townspeople set upon her (can't remember what happens next) and Jenufa then makes it up with a boyfriend who is decent and kind, nothing like the jerk who made her pregnant.
I hated the story. I hated the mother who killed the baby; I hated ber because I did not believe anyone could, due to shame, do such a thing. I didn't take to Jenufa very much..... It was all a bit Mills and Boonish.
I could go on with my prejudices but I won't because I have just been reading about Janacek and he is a kind of appealing sort of fellow.
I must try him out again. Though there is that fanfare for trumpets, Synfonia? (or whatever it's called) standing between me and him: it's popular - as popular as Jenufa - but I hate it, I detest it.... almost as much as that fanfare for the common man by Aaron Copland. God, what a dreadful bore that is!