Intimate Letters: Leos Janacek to Kamila Stosslova

by JohnTyrrell (Editor), Leos Janacek (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $6.87

  In 1927 the Czech composer Leos Janacek met Kamila Stosslova on holiday at Luhacovice, a spa resort in Moravia. He was 63 and locked in a loveless marriage; she was 26. After the holiday Janacek began writing to Kamila and the correspondence continued until his death. This volume collects a selection of their letters, supported by a diary of meetings between the two and a decoding of the erotic references in the letters. It aims to throw light on the nature of Janacek's creative genius, as well as to chronicle their relationship.

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $3.42

  In 1928 Leos Janacek completed 'Intimate Letters', his String Quartet No. 2, just a few months before he died at the age of seventy-four. This work encapsulated musically all his passionate feelings about Kamila Stoesslova, the married woman nearly forty years his junior to whom Janacek had written hundreds of letters in the past decade. John Tyrrell has compiled and translated a selection of these letters and presents them together with some mostly unknown photographs, a decoding of the erotic references in the letters and a diary of the couple's meetings.The result is a remarkable book which illuminates the inner life of one of the greatest opera composers of the twentieth century.