Janáček, Leoš

Related Category: Music: History, Composers, and Performers: Biographies

(lĕ´ôsh yä´nächĕk), 1854–1928, Czech composer, theorist, and collector of Slavic folk music. He studied in Prague and Leipzig and founded a music conservatory at Brno in 1881. His works include the operas Jenufa (1904), his best-known work; Katia Kabanova (1921), after Ostrovsky's Storm; The Makropulos Affair (1926); and From the House of the Dead (1930), after a novel by Dostoyevsky. Also of note are Janáček's song cycle, The Diary of One Who Vanished (1916–19), and his Glagolitic Festival Mass (1926), with a text in Old Slavonic.