Of the four mature orchestral works of Leos Janacek, one is widely known (the Sinfonietta), and one is often heard (Taras Bulba). The shortest, Ballad of Blanek, is probably the least-known, while the instant work belongs to the category of unjustly neglected music.

Antonin Dvorak ended his career as a symphonic composer with a series of tone poems from Czech folk tales of magic (the term "fairy tale" has connotations that are too gentle for these mostly grisly stories). Janacek's "The Fiddler's Child" ("Sumarovo dite") comes from a similar source, though the poetic version that directly inspired Janacek was by Svatopluk Cech, one of his favorite writers.

This tone poem is particularly notable in the evolution of Janacek's music in that it represents the full emergence of his mature compositional and orchestral style. The early operas from Sarka to Fate (and including Jeji pastorkyna or Jenufa) typically took a long time to compose, and remain at heart late-romantic works. The long gestation of the first part of The Excursions of Mr. Broucek (1908-1917) represented a struggle by Janacek over his material and culminated in a new, highly individual sound as Janacek's reluctant hero found himself on the Moon.

Janacek's new sound involves the use of very short melodic elements (which allow for a fast-paced sort of musical structure), clear and separated orchestral textures featuring prominent instrumental solos, and, sometimes, unusual mixes of lean orchestral sonorities.

Janacek uses this new palette to create an eerie effect. The tone poem closely follows the tale.

The sad opening section seems to picture the life of an old itinerant fiddler who used to go around the countryside playing for coins. He had his child with him. The old man dies, and the child is given to an old woman to raise. She also keeps his fiddle.

One night she dreams that she hears the strange music of the fiddler and sees him standing by the bedside of the child, trying to call the youngster to him with his music. When she awakens, she finds that the child has died and the violin is missing.

The story inevitably requires some prominent violin solo passages. Using a typical device of his maturity, Janacek mostly writes concise melodies over whirring ostinato figures, but at the emotionally appropriate time unites these short themes and broadens them into a flowing and arching melodic statement.

In this work, that moment is when the fiddler appears and plays his melodies, making the solo part quite rewarding for the orchestra's concertmaster (leader).

The short and breathless melodies return to depict the old woman's discovery of the dead child's body, and propel the twelve-minute tone poem to an effective conclusion.

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