Speaking of feel-good posts, here’s one I think you’ll enjoy: the closing section (ie, the Rozek or Little Corner) of Leoš Janáček’s Moravian Dances for orchestra. It’s short, but so sweet it might spike your blood-sugar level to unheard-of heights.

I’ve heard this soothing, laid-back piece a bajillion times on the radio without bothering to find out anything about the composer until this very afternoon. Turns out, he was a fairly interesting fella, just as most of the other less well-known composers I was pig-ignorant about until I finally buckled down and undertook a little snooping on the Innarnuts.

Leoš Janáček (born July 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, Moravia, Austrian Empire—died Aug. 12, 1928, Ostrava, Czech.) was a composer, one of the most important exponents of musical nationalism of the 20th century.

Janáček was a choirboy at Brno and studied at the Prague, Leipzig, and Vienna conservatories. In 1881 he founded a college of organists at Brno, which he directed until 1920. He directed the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra from 1881 to 1888 and in 1919 became professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory. Deeply interested in folk music, he collected folk songs with František Bartoš and between 1884 and 1888 published the journal Hudební Listy (Musical Pages). His first opera, Šárka (1887–88; produced 1925), was a Romantic work in the spirit of Wagner and Smetana. In his later operas he developed a distinctly Czech style intimately connected with the inflections of his native speech and, like his purely instrumental music, making use of the scales and melodic characteristics of Moravian folk music. His most important operas were Jenůfa (original title, Její pastorkyňa, 1904; Her Foster Daughter), which established Janáček’s international reputation; Věc Makropulos (1926; The Makropulos Case), Z mrtvého domu (1930; From the House of the Dead ), the two one-act satirical operas Výlet pana Broučka do Mĕsíce (Mr. Brouček’s Excursion to the Moon) and Výlet pana Broučka do XV stol (Mr. Brouček’s Excursion to the 15th Century), both performed in Prague in 1920, and the comic opera Příhody Lišky Bystroušky (1924; The Cunning Little Vixen). His operas are marked by a skilled use of music to heighten dramatic impact.

His choral works also show his manner of modelling the writing for voices on the inflections of his native language, most significantly the Glagolská mše (1926; Glagolitic Mass), also called the Slavonic or Festival Mass. It is written in the liturgical language Old Slavonic, but because it uses instruments it cannot be performed in the Orthodox Church service. His song cycles Zápisník zmizelého (1917–19; Diary of One Who Vanished) and Řikadla (1925–27; Nursery Rhymes) are also notable.

Like I said, fairly interesting—even though he seems never to have

• Robbed any banks
• Got drunk as a boiled owl, ambled around aimlessly for a few hours, then curled up and slept on any sidewalks, just so’s he could say he did it
• Punched out a cop for no discernable reason, then ran away with his cop-hat
• Abandoned his devoted, patient wife and two kids to run off with some wanton hussy years younger than him
• Caroused wildly at all-night parties he regularly threw at his home—the guest list consisting mostly of fellow rowdy-musician friends (bringing their instruments along for the inevitable enrage-the-neighbors jam session, natch) all of whom were every bit as wild as Janáček himself was, including a bevy of the aforementioned wanton hussies who were all ditto—closely aping the drunken, lecherous, scandalizing carryings-on of one Wolfgang Amadè Mozart, from his mid-late teens right up unti his tragic, mysterious death at 35 years too young—among plenty others of his type, class, and inclination towards madcap, pearl-clutchinjg revelry

Okay, okay, maybe Janáček WAS kinda boring, at least as far as the Intarwebz knows. It’s still a great tune he wrote; even if he fell way short of the lofty standard upheld by most of us party-hearty musician types, from his era right up until last night’s After Party. Ya gotta give the guy that much, anyway. He’s in pretty good compamy there: Grieg, Sibelius, Paganini, to name but three, were practically teetotallers themselves for various reasons, most of which boil down not to any personal aversion to intoxicating spirits, wild women, and/or over-the-top, all-night blowouts at some fellow musician’s pad, but simply that they had neither time for nor interest in such-like frivolities, being acutely single-minded and purposive regarding their art and/or career.

Heck-far, even the incredible Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wasn’t a big drinker, despite being a born and raised vodka-swilling Rooskie—although a big ol’ passel of music critics, historians, and fully-credentialed Professors of Music, all widely respected, serious-minded, and well-regarded men, blame his untimely death in part on the effect of many years of not-infrequent overindulgence in alcohol. Then again, others insist that Tchaikovsky committed suicide by intentionally infecting himself with cholera, which seems pretty far-fetched to me, so who knows.

From an eartly age and throughout his too-brief life, Tchaikovsky struggled with extended bouts of depression; anxiety over his homosexuality; monumental, everlasting grief over the untimely loss of his mother from…you guessed it, cholera; deep, unattenuated doubts about his own musical talent and ability, exacerbated by his home nation’s repeated rejection of his work as just not good enough; vicious scorn and mockery for his compositions hurled at him by his music-playing and/or -composing peers, blowhard critics, and scholarly, snootily above-it-all music historians. With all that going on, it was a miracle the poor, sorely-beset man managed to write any music at all, much less the remarkable, unique, literally music-world-altering music he produced. Confronted by a raging torrent of condemnation and a virtual tsunami of self-doubt, Tchaikovsky persevered and doggedly kept at it, for which superhuman resolve the whole world can be thankful.

Think of it: Fantasy Overture to Romeo and Juliet? Swan Lake? The 1812 Overture? The Nutcracker Suite, fer Christ’s sweet sake? T’would be a dark, dismal world indeed had Tchaikovaksky’s critics prevailed, thus depriving us all of those classic, unforgettable works. Fuck me runnin’, but those four pieces alone are entirely gorgeous, so far removed from Ordinary as to be unparalleled,, profoundly moving, Platonic ideals of the composer’s art—whatever the critics back in the day might’ve thought, said, or done, the fuggin’ tin-eared morons. Sheeit, Christmas just wouldn’t be very merry without Nutcracker on heavy-rotation at every local classical-music radio station, regardless of where “local” might happen to be for you.

It’s positively stupefying to me; although I haven’t heard all of Tchaikovsky’s copious compositional archive (yet), everything I have heard—which is a fair and steadily-increasing percentage, happily—I’ve loved straightaway. That so many supposedly knowledgable, competent, serious-minded “professionals” would so cruelly, wantonly torment and harass this supremely gifted artist for his peerless creations—very nearly destroying the man, his career, and his prospective legacy apurpose—makes the mind boggle and reel, it truly does.

It reduces the mind to that distinctly unpleasant, dead-drunk, confused, can’tfindmykeyswherethebleedin’HelldidIparkthecarandjustwhichdirectionishomeanyway? state of cognitive dysfunction and/or disarray. NOTA BENE: this knee-walking-drunk sensation has been known now and again to creep up on people who haven’t so much as smelled any hard likker in a cpl–three days. So watch out, that’s all. Vigilance, my boy—constant, strict, untiring vigilance. It’s the only way.

High-school drunk or stone-cold sober; frequent over-imbiber or scowling, pinch-faced abstainer; day-drinking, breadfruit-beschnozzed old soak or active, card-carrying member of the Reinstate Prohibition NOW League; jolly, red-faced career barstool-holder-downer or prim and proper old biddy whose perfervid, passionate commitment to seeing any- and everything containing alcohol of any kind, in any amount (including but by no means limited to cough syrup, household cleaning products, rubbing alcohol, &C,) banned once and for all is as plaih as the knobby, saggy-skinned knees peeping out from below the hem of her nothing-special, dark-colored, so thick it’s completely opaque even to infrared devices, matronly skirt—if you haven’t experienced this dreadful phenomenon before, take it from one who knows whereof he speaks: it t’ain’t no fun a-tall. Not even a weency little smidge, it ain’t.

Illicit production and/or consumption of Satan’s Own HellBrew to be punishable, by the by, via swift and sure execution sans benefit of trial in open court before a duly-empaneled jury of the defendant’s peers—12 men good and true, as the old saw has it—presided over by (in my dreams) an honest, unbiased judge, unapologetically a strict Constructionist of the Old School, tough but unfailingly fair. Along with the (former, now expunged by decree of MADD) right to appeal and/or judicial review of the dangerous criminal’s richly-deserved and/or morally-impeccable sentence.

From the present-day perspective, the persecution of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky calls to mind a marauding pack of jackals swooping in on their slow, half-crippled prey—albeit much uglier, more brutal, more senseless, and more incomprehensible than previous mindless-pack style assaults. As Tchaikovsky’s reputation and appreciation for his work continues to grow—soar, even—the bitter, crazed attacks against the man and his music from then-peers, even the governments of several nation-states, come to look more and more bizarre right along with the sadly-belated jubilee of praise. Y’know, precisely as things ought to be but too rarely are, not once the slavering jackal-pack has begun to bay, howl, snarl, and snap.

Too bad said critics are well past their sell-by date, so tying em all up to a big ol’ oak tree, pouring honey over their shriveled nutsacks, and leaving ‘em to either starve to death or be eaten alive by whole colonies of hungry red ants, both worker-drones and Queens together, is right out, alas. Too bad, too, that sail foams and YewToob weren’t around back then either, so’s we could hire a ready-and-willing team of eager young cameramen standing by in shifts to capture and live-stream the final wretched agonies of the critics in real time—close-up zoom-ins on the screams and desperate pleas for a nonexistent mercy that will never come, if you please, with my humble thanks to one and all for the excellent work.

Five to ten million views in the first hour, I guesstimate, ratcheting up steadily from there as the agony intensifies; the screams alternating between louder, then more hoarse-voiced; the hunger pangs begin to really bite, HARD; and the utter hopelessness of their godawful plight starts to sink in for reals. Speaking as a guy who’s never watched a live-stream, podcast, or any other such space-age gimcrackery and has exactly zero (0) plans to rethink my grouchy-old-coot indifference towards This Modern World Of Ours And All Its Wonders at this late date, I’d definitely tune in to this thrice-worthy production and watch my own self, start to finish, until the point when my eyeballs were bleeding and my skull had cracked wide-ass open—the better to plop revolting, densely-coiled, whacking great gobbets of my own personal grey matter all over the pricey, ostensibly authentic Persian living-room rug with, my dear. Hey, gullible customer, we have paperwork out back in our warehouse which documents your beautiful new rug’s authenticity; give me just a few minutes to run on back to the warehouse and fetch it so’s you can look it all over to your own satisfaction, ‘kay? BE RIGHT BACK…

*Checks watch; checks watch AGAIN; forces himself not to look at aforementioned wrist-mounted timepiece until an excruciatingly sloooow five full minutes has elapsed before allowing himself to check watch one last time, just for old-times’ sake; shakes head ruefully, disappointedly; exits store; starts car; drives back home; pauses before struggling out of car to send up an audible, impromptu prayer conveying his boundless, most untrammeled, heartfelt, and sincere gratitude to Almighty God for His Heavenly Generosity in preventing His Earthly, steeped-in-sin servant from making a complete ass of himself for the umpty-leven-millionth time. So far this year, that would be.*

Bound to be the laff riot of the late 19th/early 20th century, I’m thinking—more solid yoks than a Catskills Jewish Stand-up Comics convention; more raucous belly-laughs than watching some fat old rummy weave, wobble, and blind-stagger his way to wherever he thinks (mistakenly, like as not) the closest Mens Room at the local dive-bar is situated, his protruding, flabby gut shielding him from potential injuries sustained in numberless hard, wicked-sharp collisions with the bar, the walls, the tables, other unsuspecting bar patrons—although, in a pinch, End-Stage-Middle-Age Rum-A-Dum-Dummy is perfectly happy to make do with the Ladies, provided he can sneak inside there without any of his fellow barflies noticing his at best marginally-stealthy Ladies Room duck ’n’ dive, a faux pas most grievous which is looked at very much askance amongst the more polite, tasteful, culturally-refined and highly-Evolved, most discerning elements of the broader Society, perhaps even straight-up illegal to boot; more fun, ultimately, than the proverbial barrel of monkeys, believe it or leave it.