Although Janáček’s most important contribution to the history of music was his outstanding list of operas, he was surrounded by the music of the church from an early age. Born the ninth child out of thirteen in Hukvaldy, Northern Moravia, there was great pressure on space at home. At the age of eleven Janáček was sent to the Augustinian Monastery in Brno to become a chorister. He grew up at the school there, eventually took over the choir and began to compose anthems and settings for the liturgy.
During his adult life Janáček was an atheist and distanced himself from the church Nevertheless religion features frequently in his work, not always in a positive light; as an emotional crutch (in the despairing pleas of the characters in Jenůfa or Kát’a Kabanová) or in a more humorous light (the alcoholic, lustful Priest in The Cunning Little Vixen). The composer once described organised religion as ‘concentrated death. Tombs under the floor, bones on the altar, pictures full of torture and dying. Rituals, prayers, chants – death and nothing but death. I don’t want to have anything to do with it’. Whatever Janáček’s personal views, at the age of 72 he decided to write a large-scale orchestral mass, namely The Glagolitic Mass. This setting was not like his previous settings for the choir at the Monastery in Brno, but a non-liturgical piece, like Verdi’s Requiem or Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms.
The Glagolitic Mass was begun shortly after Janáček’s trip to Great Britain, in 1926. The idea for the setting was suggested by a clerical friend, who whilst criticizing the paucity of religious music in Czechoslovakia suggested that the composer try his hand at a new setting of the mass. Rather typically, Janáček opted out of a traditional Latin setting, and chose an Old Church Slavonic text (though it is actually a hybrid of the extinct language). The term ‘Glagolitic’ refers to the original script in which Old Church Slavonic was written. The original words date from the 9th century, and was used in church services on the 7th July, the feast day of St Cyril and St Methodius. Janáček later said in an article printed in his local paper, Lidové noviny in November 1927, that the piece was actually inspired by an electrical storm he witnessed whilst on his holiday in the spa-town of Luhačovice. ‘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!’ [Glory].’
It was there, in Luhačovice (where the composer spent a few weeks every year during the summer) that the majority of The Glagolitic Mass was written. Janáček revised the work thoroughly later in the year, and it was first performed in the composer’s home town of Brno on the 5 December 1927 and in Prague on the 8 April 1928. The Mass is peppered with Janáček’s customary traits; use of repeated motives (Sir Charles Mackerras is recently quoted as saying that he was the first minimalist composer), short bursts of lyricism and bizarre, often surprising groupings of instruments within the orchestra. The Glagolitic Mass is a triumphant work (quite apart from Janáček’s thoughts on religion) and much like his opera The Cunning Little Vixen celebrates life overcoming death. Whether Janáček wanted to or not, he created a piece which echoed the primary teachings of the Christian Church he had chosen to leave behind.
