Leoš Janáček (1854-1928)
Autograph music manuscript, leaves from the orchestral score of his first opera, Sarka, [1887, revised in 1918]
Fragments from the earliest version of Janáček's first opera.

Full score on 20-stave paper, 12 pages on 6 leaves, 317 x 245mm, foliated 32, 38, 49, 52, 60 and 61, including some vocal text in Czech, erasures, annotations and extensive cancellations in pen and lead or coloured pencils (some perhaps by Osvald Chlubna or another hand), (paper brittle with a number of splits).

Provenance:
(1) With Musikantiquariat Dr. Ulrich Drüner, 2015.

(2) Schøyen Collection, MS 5548.

The present leaves are passages cut during Janáček's 1918 revisions of his 1887 score. The libretto for Sarka, by Julius Zeyer based on part of his verse epic Vyšehrad, was originally written at the request of Antonín Dvořák. After both Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana declined to set it to music, Zeyer published it in January and February 1887, at which point the then 33-year old Janáček began composing his own score. This early version was ultimately laid aside after Zeyer's refusal to grant his consent, and Janáček only returned to it in 1918, making extensive revisions (especially to the vocal parts) and cuts, and reworking the orchestration in collaboration with his pupil, Osvald Chlubna. This revised version was first performed in Brno on 11 November 1925.