Janáček: Years of a Life
Volume 2 (1914–1928)
Tsar of the Forest
by John Tyrrell
Faber and Faber, London, 2007
xxii, 1074pp
ISBN-10: 0-571-23667-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-571-23667-1

John Tyrrell's biography of the Czech composer Leoš Janáček is the culmination of a life's work in the field. It stands upon his existing documentary studies of Janáček's operas and translations of other key sources and his examination of thousands of still unpublished letters and other documents in the Janáček archive in Brno. Altogether it provides the most detailed account of Janáček's life in any language and offers new views of Janáček as composer, writer, thinker and human being.

Volume 2 opens at the outbreak of the First World War and at the time of Janacek's lowest ebb. Within two years, however, his fortunes were transformed by the Prague production of Jenůfa. This led to international fame and fortune and to the magnificent creative flowering in which the elderly composer wrote most of his best-known works. His personal life was affected by his public affair with Gabriela Horvátová and his friendship with Kamila Stösslová, whom he saw as the inspiration for many of his late works.