Janáček's musical language began to alter in the latter part of the nineteenth century as his involvement with folk music increased. As his awareness of his roots grew, the folk songs that he knew from childhood gradually took on greater importance, and ultimately he became involved in collecting, publishing, and arranging them. His settings of folk melodies developed into folk-song collecting in the mid-1880s and into full ethnographic activities in the 1890s. He studied the music, wrote about it, and made numerous arrangements. He organized concerts of folk musicians and was an active participant at two major Prague exhibitions that involved folk culture: the Provincial Jubilee Exhibition in 1891 and the Czecho-Slavonic Ethnographic Exhibition in 1895. Folk music corresponded remarkably well to his manner of thinking, his view of culture, and his conception of art; it supported his nationalist feelings and ultimately influenced his musical theories and musical style. In the last decade of the century, folk elements began to infiltrate Janáček's own compositions and became fundamental components of his style. Chapter 2 already mentioned their influence on melodic patterns, rhythm, and textures, elements that altered the classical nineteenth-century character of his earlier compositions. He stated, “If I grow, I grow only from folk songs, from human speech… . I laugh at those who come with an acoustic tone only.” Earlier we saw Janáček's work as a collector; this chapter reviews some of his thoughts on folk music and then examines several of his folk arrangements. These display a varying mix of authentic folk elements and classical features.

The Meaning of Folk Music

Janáček's enthusiasm about folk music and folk culture flowed from his deepest concerns and interests—humanitarian, nationalistic, artistic. First, he saw in folk music a beautiful, moving, and heartfelt art form of the people. It represented true, realistic folk life in its many guises, focusing on humanity, on love, on work, on nature. It embodied the beauty as well as the hardships and cruelties of folk life. This was music of the common people, daily in touch with the land and the sun, experiencing life in a simple and truthful way.