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Taras Bulba, Rhapsody for Orchestra
Leoš Janáček
S
ince nearly all of Leoš Janáček’s bestknown works date from well into the
20th century, it is easy to forget that this
greatest of Moravian composers was anchored in the late-Romantic and nationalist
traditions of the Czech Lands. He was actually a near-contemporary of his Bohemian
colleague Antonín Dvořák, who was only 13
years older, but because Janáček enjoyed reasonable longevity and because his most notable output came later in life, he seems to
belong to an entirely later generation. As
such he has been increasingly revered as an
important modernist.
Born into a musical family, Janáček
patched together his musical education during short stints at the Prague Organ School,
Leipzig Conservatory, and Vienna Conservatory before he settled in for “proper” fouryear college training at the Czech Teachers’
Institute (1869–72). He founded a conservatory of his own in Brno and settled into a
modest career as an educator and critic. Uncertain of his own voice as a composer,
Janáček gave up writing music for most of
the 1880s. However, buoyed by a growing interest in the folk music of his native Moravia,
he started creating editions of folk songs and,
inevitably, developing original works reflecting that interest. In the first decade of the
new century he began to achieve works that
would cement his place in music history, including the opera Jenůfa (premiered in 1904,
when Janáček turned 50) and the piano suite
On the Overgrown Path (1900–12).
Janáček was an enthusiastic Russophile.
He gave his two children Russian names —
Olga and Vladimir — and was widely read in
Russian literature. He visited Russia only
once (in 1896), but on his return home he
founded a Russian Circle in Brno to promote
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the country’s language, literature, and music.
His love for the Russian literary greats is
widely reflected in his catalogue. When he
was only 22 he wrote a melodrama for
speaker and orchestra, titled Death, to a text
by Lermontov, and his Pohádka (Fairy Tale)
for Cello and Piano (1910) was inspired by
Zhukovsky’s “The Tale of Czas Berendey.”
The writings of Tolstoy affected Janáček
deeply: in 1921 he seriously considered writing an opera on Anna Karenina, and two
years later he actually did compose his String
Quartet No. 1 as a sort of musical counterpart
to Tolstoy’s novella The Kreutzer Sonata. His
operatic canon includes Kát’a Kabanová,
which is derived from Ostrovsky’s play The
Thunderstorm, and The House of the Dead,
after Dostoyevsky.
The orchestral rhapsody Taras Bulba was
also born of this passion for Russian literature, deriving from an 1835 novella by Nikolai
Gogol (1809–52). Although he wrote the
IN SHORT
Born: July 3, 1854, in Hukvaldy, near Přibor,
Moravia (now in the Czech Republic)
Died: August 12, 1928, in Moravská Ostrava,
Moravia (now in the Czech Republic)
Work composed: 1915–18, completed on
Good Friday (March 29)
World premiere: October 9, 1921, at the
National Theatre in Brno, with František
Neumann conducting
New York Philharmonic premiere:
October 19, 1933, Bruno Walter, conductor
Most recent New York Philharmonic
performance: December 11, 2004, Colin
Davis, conductor
Estimated duration: ca. 23 minutes
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story in Russian, Gogol was actually Ukrainian by birth and upbringing. Taras Bulba
was one of four stories with Ukrainian settings he published together, though he soon
began to purge his work of its “Ukrainianness” when his reputation as a “Russian
writer” took off. In 1842 Gogol issued a revised, expanded version of Taras Bulba in
which Ukraine is portrayed as merely a region
of Russia (rather than the independent nation
it was in the 17th century, where the story was
set) — retaining the anti-Polish and anti-Semitic sentiments of the original version.
Janáček had first read Gogol’s telling of
this classic story in 1905 — presumably in the
revised version — and considered making a
musical setting at that time. The project did
not take shape until a decade later, when the
hostilities of World War I flamed the composer’s pro-Russian political sentiments. As
Janáček wrote of this “musical testament” (as
he termed it):
The Story at a Glance
Janáček focuses on three key episodes from Gogol’s Taras Bulba, and his musical depiction of
these sections is detailed and specific. Listeners who care to delve into the fine points of his setting may wish to do so using as a guide Jaroslav Vogel’s Leoš Janáček: A Biography (Norton, 1981),
since that account, its author explains, is based “partly on the explanation which after a performance in Prague, I was able to prize out of the normally uncommunicative composer himself.”
The following is a bare-bones account of the basic, morbid plot, which takes place during the
1628 war between Ukraine and Poland. Taras Bulba, a captain of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, is initially joined by his sons Andri and Ostap on the side of Ukraine:
Part One — The Death of Andri: This is a sort of “Romeo and Juliet” episode in which Andri,
the elder son of Taras, is revealed to be in love with a Polish girl. His passion leads him to change
sides in the struggle, but when Taras encounters his son among the Polish troops, he executes
him personally before riding into battle.
Part Two — The Death of Ostap: The younger son has been captured by the Poles, who torture him, condemn him to death, and dance a mazurka. Learning of this, Taras sneaks into the
crowd assembled to witness the execution. He can’t change the course of things, but he manages to catch Ostap’s attention, cheering him with courage to face his death — after which
Taras slips away undiscovered.
Part Three — The Prophecy and the Death of Taras Bulba: Having avenged Ostap’s death,
Taras is taken prisoner by the Poles, who nail him to a tree, ignite a bonfire beneath him, and
dance a krakowiak. The dying
Taras glimpses his soldiers escaping by bravely charging
their horses across the Dniestr
River, and he expires rapt in a
vision of the eventual triumph
of his people.
Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks
to the Sultan, by Russian artist
Ilya Repin, ca. 1875
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Not because Taras Bulba killed his own
son for betraying his people (First Part),
not for the martyr’s death of his second
son (Second Part), but because “there is no
fire nor suffering in the whole world which
could break the strength of the Russian
people” — for these words which fall onto
the stinging fiery embers of the pyre on
which Taras Bulba, the famous Cossack
captain, was burned to death (Third Part), I
have composed this rhapsody according to
the legend as written down by N.V. Gogol.
Instrumentation: three flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes and English horn,
two clarinets and E-flat clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three
trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,
triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bells, harp,
organ, and strings.
Taras in Filmdom
The tale of Taras Bulba has proved irresistible to
filmmakers, though usually at some remove from
Gogol’s telling. The earliest silver-screen treatment
arrived the same year as Janáček’s death — an
hour-long Taras Bulba shot in Poland in 1924 and
starring J. N. Douvan-Forzow as a surprisingly corpulent Cossack captain. In 1936 there followed a
joint French-British production (with the former influencing the title — Tarass Boulba), and in 1963 the
Italians entered the fray with Taras Bulba, Il
Cosacco. The most recent version, a 2009 Russian
production filmed in Ukraine and Poland, was timed
to the bicentennial of Gogol’s birth. (It was released
on DVD in the United States as The Conqueror.)
All of these pale, however, compared to the lavish
Hollywood costume-drama / adventure epic Taras
Bulba, which J. Lee Thompson directed in 1962. Here
Yul Brynner, as Taras, has to settle with Tony Curtis,
as the errant son Andri, against a backdrop of galloping hordes of Cossack horsemen. It’s pretty
thin at two hours, but the movie’s score, by Franz
Waxman, was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Music. Waxman didn’t win; the award went instead to Maurice Jarre’s sound track
for another swashbuckler, Lawrence
of Arabia.
From top: Poster from the 1936 FrenchBritish production; Tony Curtis and Yul
Brynner in the 1962 Hollywood version of
Taras Bulba
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