The cantata Our Father (Czech: OtÃÂe nÃ¡à ¡ or OtÃÂenÃ¡à ¡), originally called Moravian Our Father (Czech: Moravský OtÃÂe nÃ¡à ¡), is a setting of the Lord's Prayer by the Czech composer Leoà ¡ JanáÃÂek. Its first version (1901) was performed as an accompaniment to a series of tableaux vivants and was scored for mixed chorus, tenor, piano and harmonium; it has never been published. The revised version (1906), for mixed chorus, tenor, harp and organ, lasts about 15 minutes. Our Father met with a mixed reception at first, but it is now a much-recorded work and has been praised as an interesting and successful example of JanáÃÂek's ability to combine Christian texts with his own social commitment.
Our Father falls into five self-contained sections:
In the spring of 1901 the governors of an old women's home in Brno were lent reproductions of Our Father, a cycle of paintings by the Polish artist Józef MÃÂcina-Krzesz depicting Russian peasants in situations illustrative of the Lord's Prayer. They decided to stage a series of tableaux vivants based on these paintings to be performed by a local theatre group as a fundraising venture, and they commissioned JanáÃÂek to write "musical illustrations" for this entertainment. In May of that year he did so, setting the Lord's Prayer in Czech for mixed voice chorus, tenor, harmonium and/or piano. The piece received its first performance at the National Theatre, Brno on 15 June 1901 under the title Moravský OtÃÂe nÃ¡à ¡ (A Moravian Our Father), though JanáÃÂek later deleted the word Moravský on the grounds that it described the composer rather than the work.
In 1906 JanáÃÂek rescored the work, replacing the piano and harmonium with harp and organ; this revised version was performed in November of that year at the Rudolfinum in Prague by the Czech Orchestral Music Society. The conductor at this performance was Adolf PiskáÃÂek, though JanáÃÂek had to take the last rehearsals, PiskáÃÂek being prevented by pressure of work. The work got mixed reviews and JanáÃÂek declared himself depressed by the performance, regretting the absence of the original tableaux vivants. In October 1924 Our Father and three others of his cantatas were performed in an ill-attended concert in Brno by the Beseda Philharmonic Society as part of the public celebrations of JanáÃÂek's 70th birthday.
Though Our Father was not particularly well received in JanáÃÂek's lifetime it has been given more praise since his death. The critic John Quinn noted that the scoring for organ and harp "is surprisingly atmospheric and the instruments complement each other beautifully...This is a most interesting work". Jaroslav Vogel called it "this too seldom performed work", and believed that it "reveals the meditative qualities of its creator and his ability to merge into one the Christian prayer and his own social and humanitarian feelings". He referred to the "almost revolutionary conception" of the third section, with its "almost threateningly insistent ostinato figure to the pressing cries 'bread, bread'". BohumÃÂr à  tÃÂdroà  agreed that JanáÃÂek's setting emphasised the human as opposed to the ideal conception of the Lord's Prayer:
The possibility of a Czech nationalist overtone to JanáÃÂek's setting of the words "Thy kingdom come" has also been noted.