Violin Concerto Wandering of a Little Soul Full Score

Janacek Violin Concerto Wandering of a Little Soul Full Score

Violin & Piano reduction available H7504.

Performance material available for hire

The Violin Concerto “The Wandering of a Little Soul" is a reconstruction of a composition by Leos Janacek which originated in the years 1924 - 1928. In the end Janacek dropped the intention of composing a violin concerto and he utilised part of the unfinished material of the intended concerto in his prelude to the opera "From the House of the Dead".

The remaining material was for many years in the possession of conductor Bretislav Bakala, who revised and prepared the final version of the opera  "From the House of the Dead", and in the sixties gave this material to the Moravian Museum in Brno. Its director, Dr Svatava Pribanova, proposed to composers and musicologists Dr Leos Faltus and Dr Milos Stedron to undertake the reconstruction of the work and they used two sources - fragments of an autograph of the violin concerto and the prelude to the above mentioned opera, so giving the composition its original image.

They consciously violated here the chief editorial principle for a critical edition of the work of L. Janacek, according to which a composer's work is followed up to the last amendment made in his own hand; Janacek's own hand in this case is quite clear: the author had decided nor to write a violin concerto!

And so now, when the violin concerto "The Wandering of a Little Soul" has been reconstructed and is being published, the form of the last hand goes back to Janacek’s original intention, particularly as this image of the composition is interesting not just for musicologists, but also for the music public.

Detailed information about this work will be given in the prepared critical edition of the score of this composition.