This final chapter looks at the increased rhythmic complexity of Janáček's late music, a feature that in a sense completes his stylistic development. I will examine sections of three works: the wind sextet Youth (Mládí) (1924), the Sinfonietta (1926), and the Second String Quartet (1928). The rhythmic issues involve irregular rhythmic groupings, variable rhythmic placement of motives, and fluctuating and rarely fully resolving metrical conflicts. Of special interest are passages where the rhythmic alignment of two concurrent parts is disturbed, allowing them to progress independently, as if representing two different characters. Such passages may suggest a narrative analytical approach, an approach I employ where appropriate.

Youth—Third Movement

Youth was completed by July 1924; Janáček was about to celebrate his sev-entieth birthday and was sorting some reminiscences of his younger days for a forthcoming biography by Max Brod. His thoughts went back to the old Brno monastery where he received his early education and where he was one of the “blueboys,” boys dressed in blue uniforms. These recollections are reflected in the musical content of Youth: the lively exuberance of the first movement, the monastic solemnity of the second, the march of the third, and the optimism of the fourth.

The third movement is based on the short and independent March of the Blueboys (1922), whose melody Janáček combines with an idea from the first movement. That idea is primarily rhythmic, without a true melody, and it becomes a base around which the melodic ideas of the march are deployed. Interestingly, the accompanimental pattern that drives the music is in groups of three measures while the melodic material is in groups of four, making part of the movement a rhythmic struggle between three-and four-measure groups. The conflict adds interest and humor to a potentially tiresome march rhythm.

The movement is in a modified rondo form, with four Vivace sections and two contrasting Meno mosso sections (table 10.1). The last two Vivace sections are consecutive but differ in their function: the first is developmental, the second recapitulatory. The rhythmic conflict appears only in the Vivace sections, the more lyrical Meno mosso sections are primarily in four-measure groups.