Disappeared

I imagine Leoš Janáček sitting at the table for breakfast on a Sunday, enjoying the spring sun. In the middle of the Great War, that should be the main subject of the newspaper. And then a piece of news draws his attention: finally, the mystery of a young peasant who had disappeared in Wallachia without any trace has been resolved. After many speculations, they came to the conclusion that he left home out of choice. In some papers which have been proved to be his diary, Janík (this is his name) explains he fell in love with a gypsy woman and left with her when her family raised camp. A singular story; at that time and place, gypsy and not-gypsy people didn't use to interact.

Perhaps Janáček didn't read the newspaper during his breakfast, but he cut out and kept that story, written "from a pen of the self-taught writer" and published in two parts by the newspaper Lidové noviny [Peoples's newspaper] on 14 and 21 May 1916. A year later, he took the texts from the drawer and began to write what would become his cycle Zápisník zmizelého [The Diary of One Who Disappeared], finished in mid-1919 after several interruptions, and published in 1921, once revised. In those years, Janáček, in his sixties, had finally known the success, after Jenůfa was released in Vienna. Now, every opera is a new success, and his prestige as a composer becomes equal to that of his colleagues Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák.

The cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared can be split into three parts. The first one begins with the words "One day I met a gypsy girl"; the young Janík tells us of his attraction to that young woman that doesn't leave him alone, and how he tries to avoid his company. At the second part, we know that he has finally given up, but not through his words. It's the girl herself, Zefka, who tells the story; she and three more women who act as a narrator. And also a solo piano, which closes this part with an intermezzo erotico. We hear the peasant again at the third part; we share his remorse and his struggle with himself, until he finally decides to leave with Zefka and their son. In total, there are twenty-one songs and one solo piano piece; five singers and one pianist. At the score, some scenic indications, referring to the female singers' entrances and exits at the platform. All in all, an unusual structure for a song cycle. A few years after the premiere, in 1928, Janáček considered the idea of writing the orchestral version and staging the cycle, but he died that year without beginning the project. Almost twenty years later, the first version of the orchestrated cycle was released.

Regarding the anonymous text published in the newspaper, no one believed they were written by the young man; by no means an almost illiterate peasant could have produced such a fine story. For a time, people speculated with the author, probably some known writer, but the name wasn't disclosed until sixty-one years later. In 1997, an article was published in a musicology magazine explaining how, almost by chance, the heirs of writer Antonín Matula had found a letter sent to him by the writer Ozef Kalda in June 1916, where he admitted having allowed himself "that little eskamotage". Kalda, an author known for his humorous works and stories for children, died a few months before Janáček's The Diary of One Who Disappeared was premiered, he never got to know of its existence.

I get the feeling that the "little eskamotage", the sleight of hand, was one more joke by Kalda, because the love story between Janík and Zefka follows a pattern opposite to usual. It's the woman who seduces and the man who resists, who prays to God to help him not to fall into temptation and who shows remorse when he finally falls. It's the man who worries about the unexpected pregnancy, who regrets for disappointing his family, and who leaves everything to do the right thing. On the other hand, the woman doesn't seem to be worried about her family's reaction to her relationship or to her baby. I would say the situation is both implausible and curious.

The song we'll hear to illustrate this article is the penultimate of the cycle, Můj drahý tatíčku [My dear father]. On this entry of his diary, Janík addresses his father to tell him that he will not marry the woman he has chosen for him; he has committed a sin and must accept responsibilities. In this short song, we find two of the characteristics of the cycle: regarding the vocal line, Janáček keeps within the prosody of speech, creating tunes as beautiful as difficult to retain in a first audition. Regarding the piano, it's the true narrator; in a long postlude, it tells us about the annoyance and concern of the young man, now that he has decided to leave everything to enter a world to which he doesn't belong. I like very much the performance I'm suggesting, that of Pavol Breslik, accompanied by Robert Pechanec. Please listen to the song and, if you like it, listen to the whole cycle.