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Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, and teacher, renowned for his highly original operas and orchestral works deeply rooted in Moravian folk music and speech melodies.Born in Hukvaldy, Moravia (then Austrian Empire, now Czech Republic).Studied in Prague, Leipzig, and Vienna.Became director of the Brno Organ School (later Brno Conservatory).Pioneered the study and use of Moravian folk music and speech-melody (nápěvky mluvy).Achieved major international recognition late in life, primarily with the opera 'Jenůfa' (premiered 1916 in Prague).Died in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia.

• Janáček experienced profound personal tragedy: both his children, Olga (1882) and Vladimír (1888), died in infancy, leaving him and his wife Zdenka grief-stricken.
• His marriage to Zdenka Schulzová, initially happy, became strained and distant over time, partly due to the deaths of their children and his demanding career.
• In his final decade (70s), Janáček developed an intense, passionate, and largely epistolary relationship with the much younger, married Kamila Stösslová. She became his muse, inspiring major late works like the operas 'Káťa Kabanová', 'The Cunning Little Vixen', and the 'Intimate Letters' String Quartet.
• His international breakthrough came remarkably late; he was 62 when 'Jenůfa' finally had its successful Prague premiere in 1916, after being rejected for years.
• Janáček died of pneumonia in Ostrava on August 12, 1928. He contracted a chill after getting lost while searching for Kamila Stösslová's son in the Hukvaldy woods near his birthplace.