H0011

Series G / Volume 2

At the close of the 19th century, Czech society was struggling to define itself against the elements that surrounded it, especially the existence of a large German-speaking minority in the Czech lands. This emerging nationalism often expressed itself through social events in which national folklore played an important role. Among the most common types of event were various kinds of dance production, especially the popular "beseda", consisting of programs of folk dance arrangements. Leoš Janáček was himself fully immersed in these currents in the 1890?s. In various localities in Moravia and Silesia he studied and recorded the culture of folk dance, transformed the dances into versions for orchestra or piano, and managed to work them into the events put on by the Czech-speaking community's clubs and societies in Brno. An institutional framework for these events was provided by such organizations as the National Theatre in Brno and the Vesna Society (a society for the benefit of young women), as well as by the various groups preparing to exhibit at the Národopisná výstava českoslovanská 1892?1895 (Exhibiton of Czecho-Slavonic National Folk Culture; hencefort NVČ), and, in the early 1900's, the Moravian Women?s Shelter in Brno. At first Janáček was found it difficult to find the necessary information about folk dancing in published form. He made major progress in 1888, encountering traditional folk dance in villagies near his own birthplace. He described this breakthrough himself in his study "Tance valašské a lašské" (Valachian and Lachian Dances) in 1891, writing:

I was only looking for some songs, but I found so much more! I confess that up to then I had looked down on dance with something like undisguised disdain. Just the word bothered me, and even more so the XXI way they danced. I saw in it a foreign element gnawing mercilessly on our peculiarity. I can?t describe to you the joy I felt when I found myself quite by chance in a Valachian village still relatively untouched by modernity, and discovered the noble and lovely, but vivacious movements of dances previously unknown to me!