7.1.3 Speech melody

want to write opera must be taught how to immediately write down in music notation a spoken sentence or phrase. They should in a sense learn to draw from nature. To Janáček this was just study, handiwork, but very necessary as such.

He collected these speech melodies himself all his life and kept them in numerous sketchbooks. He wrote them down where he heard them, wherever this might be: spoken in the city by learned people or in the countryside by simple folks. Janáček was not only looking for the natural rhythm and melody of diction but also wanted to trace the inner affects of human nature in these sentences and phrases: joy, anger, grief, passion, and small inner tensions.

The following examples115 concern a meeting he had with the daughter of his colleague Friedrich Smetana. She:

‘Good day.’ I wait for her in front of the shop. We go to the house of Friedrich Smetana. She asks me:

‘How long will you stay?’ I notate her way of speaking. She:

‘Musical notation?’

115 Leoš Janáček, Sprechmelodieen found in Leoš Janáček, Musik Konzepte 7 p. 42-66.