Spare a thought, in the midst of this year's profusion of Irish centenaries and celebrations, for the great Moravian composer, folklorist, theorist, teacher and devoted servant of his people, Leos Janácek, who was born on July 3rd, 1854, writes Fred O'Callaghan.
So, 100 years ago today, he reached his 50th birthday. I say reached rather than celebrated, because I don't know if he was in a celebratory mood at the time. I can tell you that he celebrated his 60th birthday when it came; and that for his 70th there were public celebrations, while at home his wife cooked a goose and presented him with flowers and a tapestry.
But 50. . .Being 50 in those days was a more serious business than it is now. This was a milestone to stop even this highly energetic man in his tracks and make him take stock.
His dear friend and mentor, Dvorák (who had recently died), had by the time he reached 50 already become a world figure. Poor Fibich (four years dead) had not quite made 50, but was nevertheless remembered as one of the three great Czech composers. Smetana himself (1824-1884), even had he died at 50, would have been sure of an unique place in the history of the Czech people. Even the tragic Blodek (1834-1874) had left one opera which held a special place in the hearts of the nation.
Janácek was hardly the type to attach ominous significance to these frequent recurrences of the figure 4 in Czech musical dates. All the same, he might well have wondered how many more birthdays he had left and asked himself what, in this present year of the Lord, 1904, he had to show for the 50 years gone by.
Janácek had lived in Brno since he was 11. The role in which he served this city for all his adult life will be readily understood by those who know of Aloys Fleischmann's central importance to the musical life of Cork. Janácek, for example, directed choirs, formed and conducted an orchestra. And, in an age when the only performances were "live" ones, he ensured that Brno heard great classics such as Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, as well as important contemporary works. He was the founding director of the Brno Organ School, later to become a fully-fledged conservatory.
Although living in a town where an essential element of respectability was speaking and thinking German, he identified himself with all things Czech. He and Zdenka, his wife, spoke Czech at home - much to the consternation of certain of her family connections. (Czech, after all, was the language the servants spoke.)
In 1884 he had the satisfaction of seeing a National (i.e. Czech) Theatre open in Brno and in the same year was involved in launching a musical periodical. All in all, Janácek at the end of his half-century could console himself with the simple truth that he had constantly striven to "till the field allotted to him" - a phrase he would use in counselling his students.
Of course he also composed. In the culture of the Czech revival, composers of opera fulfilled a quasi-prophetic role. And Janácek was no exception. He had already composed three operas, of which two were by no means world-shaking. But the third he had loved with parental devotion from its beginnings. Jenufa, begun in 1894, was a genuine Moravian opera - not some mythical tale, but a realistic story about ordinary village folk. The libretto, which he wrote himself, was not in rhyming verse but in conversational prose.
His sense that this time he had achieved something special was amply confirmed by the reception accorded the opera at its premiere in the Brno National Theatre earlier in 1904. Janácek, pale with excitement and tension, took curtain-calls after each act. Afterwards he was carried on the shoulders of the singers to a celebratory party nearby. His opera, for all its originality of approach and musical language, had reached into the hearts of his own people. This at least was a memory to cheer him on his birthday.
It now became all important that Jenufa should be performed in Prague, the Czech capital. A success there would put him and Moravia firmly on the musical map.
The long, disheartening struggle towards this goal was to divide the remaining 24 years of his life into two two equal parts. For 12 years he continued his composing and his daily work in Brno, while the Prague National Theatre repeatedly said "no" to Jenufa.
Then, in 1916, came the great breakthrough. Jenufa took Prague by storm and quickly went on to become an international success, making its composer a celebrity in the world of contemporary music.
In his last 12 years, he was to give the world five more major operas, a monumental Mass, three imposing orchestral works, as well as chamber and vocal music of considerable distinction.
Brian Friel's play Conversations in which the central character is a 74-year-old Janácek, was described by Fintan O'Toole as being "haunted by notions of failure". The odd thing is that in reality Janácek's final years might better be described as that time in his life when failure became a thing of the past. I find it hard to see in the imaginative richness and diversity, the energy and daring novelty of Janácek's last outpourings, the "stripped down plainness" of which O'Toole speaks.
One thinks rather of Indian summers and autumn fires - as though fate, in compensation for the 12 years of withheld recognition, had granted the composer 12 years of restored youth.
The manner of his departure is well caught in the words of Tagore quoted on his headstone: "Like a tree uprooted".
He never withered.