ABSTRACT
Janacek's musings on the mutual interference and interconnections of music and other elements of art date from 1919-21, at a time when his compositional career was suddenly beginning to take off with the four operatic masterpieces of his old age, and they contain his final thoughts on melodrama, chiefly that it was a lesser genre than opera, nearer the world of drama than the world of music. Early melodramas, for instance those by the Czech composer Georg Benda, were intended for stage performances, but by the nineteenth century the genre was beginning to be employed more in concert contexts. In the last year of his life, when his relationship with Kamila Stosslova intensified, Janacek asked her to keep an album and, every time he visited her in Pisek, he would write a few words, sometimes a little music, often both. This was much in the spirit of the albums of the time, receptacles for fine sayings and other artistic demonstrations.
