Intimate Letters : Leos Janacek to Kamila Stosslova.

Once again Jan'acek scholar Tyrrell (Univ. of Nottingham) has done us the favor of making available in English materials that allow us insights into the personality of the composer. During the last decade of his life (1918-28) Jan'acek met and came to love passionately a married woman, Kamila St"osslov'a, considerably younger than himself. Since the two lived in different cities and saw each other infrequently (and seldom alone), there resulted a series of over 700 letters from Jan'acek to St"osslov'a, letters that remained largely unexplored until they were published in 1990 in Czech (H'adanka Ziovta). Tyrrell has translated and annotated about three quarters of these letters, adding valuable commentaries and some of the few extant letters from St"osslov'a to the composer. The translations read well, yet retain in part the idiosyncracies of the original prose. Though the earliest letters are ho-hum reading, beginning in mid-1927 the letters take on a deeply passionate and self-revelatory tone, an effusiveness that is blushingly sincere. In addition to words of love, Jan'acek provides insights into the many compositions of these years that St"osslov'a inspired. General and academic libraries. K. Pendle; University of Cincinnati