The Cunning Little Vixen (1923) is an insightful artistic statement of a young and vigorous mind. The fact that Janáček was nearly seventy years old at the time of its completion may be surprising, but apparent in the maturity of its structure and certainly its message. It was composed almost twenty years after Jenůfa, a time span evident in the more progressive nature of its musical language: motives are employed more extensively, and increased harmonic freedom allows more natural possibilities in the motive settings. Motivic expansion appears to a greater extent than before; in some cases the expansions relate to the text and action, somewhat like smaller text-painting passages. We also find more extensive use of whole-tone collections, non-functional harmonies, and interval cycles. In this chapter, I examine the opera's motives, tonality, and common-tone retention and look at techniques that create color and interest, such as harmonic shifts, irregular phrasing, and the use of contrasts. As with Jenůfa, I examine selected scenes in sequential order to give a sense of the opera's progress, and I include brief descriptions of the action.

Vixen is special in its use of animals as some of the opera's characters. This does not mean that Janáček has abandoned the desire for realism; the action still takes place in real places and deals with subjects of real life: loss of freedom, liberation, love, family, aging, death. The rhythms of everyday life propel the action. Janáček uses his extensive knowledge of speech melodies to make the realism that much more effective, injecting it into the actual music, along with the narrative. In comparing his work with Edmond Rostand's 1910 verse drama Chantecler, he explained: “The human-animals in Chanteclaire (sic) just philosophize. In my Vixen there will be dramatic action, stage action. And then the animals! For years I have listened to them, memorizing their speech; I’m at home with them.” His real motives included animal sounds; for example, he had made notations of the “songs” of his three hens and acknowledged that he was collecting others for the opera. The prospect of putting animal “speech” to use made him rather energized.