Editing Leoš Janáček (section)

=== 1900–1915: Difficult years ===
[[File:Jenůfa - the only well-preserved page of the score.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|The only preserved page of the autograph manuscript of Janáček's ''[[Jenůfa]]'']]
[[File:Leóš Janáček (1904).png|thumb|upright=0.9|Janáček in 1904]]
In the first decade of the 20th century, Janáček composed choral church music including ''[[Our Father (cantata)|Otčenáš]]'' (Our Father, 1901), ''Constitues'' (1903) and ''Ave Maria'' (1904). In 1901, the first part of his piano cycle ''[[On an Overgrown Path]]'' was published and gradually became one of his most frequently-performed works.{{sfn|Zahrádka|2006|p=XI}} In 1902, Janáček visited Russia twice. On the first occasion he took his daughter Olga to [[Saint Petersburg]], where she stayed to study Russian. Only three months later, he returned to Saint Petersburg with his wife because Olga had become very ill. They took her back to [[Brno]], but her health worsened.{{sfn|Tyrrell|2006–2007|loc=Vol. 1|pp=525–542}}

Janáček expressed his painful feelings for his daughter in a new work, his opera ''[[Jenůfa]]'', in which the suffering of his daughter had transfigured into Jenůfa's.<ref name=PlumleyBio>{{cite web|url=http://www.leosjanacek.com/biography.htm|title=Janáček: a brief biography|access-date=15 September 2008|last=Plumley|first=Gavin|archive-date=18 September 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080918064958/http://www.leosjanacek.com/biography.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> When Olga died in February 1903, Janáček dedicated ''Jenůfa'' to her memory. The opera was performed in Brno in 1904,{{sfn|Sehnal|Vysloužil|2001|p=183}} with reasonable success, but Janáček felt this was no more than a provincial achievement. He aspired to recognition by the more influential Prague opera, but ''Jenůfa'' was refused there (twelve years passed before its first performance in Prague).<ref>{{cite book |title=Káťa Kabanová |last=Tyrrell |first=John |author-link=John Tyrrell (musicologist)|year=1982 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-0-521-29853-7 |page=[https://archive.org/details/leosjanacekkat00tyrr/page/2 2] |url=https://archive.org/details/leosjanacekkat00tyrr |url-access=registration}}</ref> Dejected and emotionally exhausted, Janáček went to [[Luhačovice]] spa to recover. There he met Kamila Urválková, whose love story supplied the theme for his next opera, ''[[Destiny (Janáček)|Osud]]'' (''Destiny'').<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Tyrrell|first=John|author-link=John Tyrrell (musicologist)|year=1972|title=Janáček's ''Fate''|journal=[[The Musical Times]]|volume=113|issue=1547|pages=34–37|doi=10.2307/957619|jstor=957619}}</ref>

In 1905, Janáček attended a demonstration in support of a Czech university in Brno, where the violent death of František Pavlík, a young joiner, at the hands of the police inspired his piano sonata, ''[[1. X. 1905]]'' (''From The Street'').{{sfn|Drlíková|2004|p=67}} The incident led him to further promote the anti-German and anti-Austrian ethos of the ''Russian Circle'', which he had co-founded in 1897{{sfn|Černušák|Štědroň|Nováček|1963|p=558}} and which would be officially banned by the Austrian police in 1915.{{sfn|Drlíková|2004|p=81}} In 1906, he approached the Czech poet [[Petr Bezruč]], with whom he later collaborated, composing several choral works based on Bezruč's poetry. These included ''Kantor Halfar'' (1906), ''Maryčka Magdónova'' (1908), and ''70.000'' (1909).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Závodský |first1=Artur |title=Petr Bezruč a Leoš Janáček |journal=Sborník prácí filozofické fakulty Brněnské univerzity |date=1981 |volume=D |issue=28 |pages=32–33 |url=https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/_flysystem/fedora/pdf/108143.pdf |access-date=24 August 2023}}</ref>

Janáček's life in the first decade of the 20th century was complicated by personal and professional difficulties. He still yearned for artistic recognition from Prague.{{sfn|Vysloužil|2001|p=225}} He destroyed some of his works, others remained unfinished. Nevertheless, he continued composing, and would create several remarkable choral, chamber, orchestral and operatic works, the most notable being the 1914 cantata, ''Věčné evangelium'' (''The Eternal Gospel''), ''[[Pohádka]]'' (''Fairy tale'') for 'cello and piano (1910), the 1912 piano cycle ''V mlhách'' (''[[In the Mists]]''), his [[Violin Sonata (Janáček)|violin sonata]], and his first symphonic poem ''Šumařovo dítě'' (''A Fiddler's Child''). His fifth opera, ''Výlet pana Broučka do měsíce'' (''[[The Excursions of Mr. Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century]]''), composed from 1908 to 1917, has been characterized as the most "purely Czech in subject and treatment" of all of Janáček's operas.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Shawe-Taylor|first=Desmond|author-link=Desmond Shawe-Taylor (music critic)|title=The Operas of Leoš Janáček|journal=[[Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association]]|pages=49–64|volume=85|date=1958|doi=10.1093/jrma/85.1.49}}{{subscription required}}</ref>