"Music for me is the idea of light" a view of the life and music of Bohuslav Martinu.

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) is one of the truly world famous "four" among Czech composers, together with Bedrich Smetana, Antonin Dvorak and Leos Janacek. He is also considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century. Over his lifetime Martinu wrote more than four hundred compositions of every type and genre: symphonies, operas, cantatas, oratorio, ballets, chamber works, film and stage music. He is the author of sixteen operas, fifteen ballets, around thirty concertante works, and almost a hundred chamber works all the way from duets to nonets. He composed a hundred and sixteen vocal-instrumental works, including three melodramas and one oratorio. Among his orchestral works let us mention his six symphonies and another near fifty compositions for large and chamber orchestra.

"For the rest, I believe greatness consists in how naturally we express our idea."

(B. Martinu, USA, Ridgefield, 1944)

Composing was the focus of Bohuslav Martinu's life and apart from a few years when he worked as a teacher of composition, it was his only source of livelihood. This is one reason why he was so unusually prolific as a composer. His extraordinary energy is attested by the vast number of surviving letters from his correspondence with important conductors and musicians, representatives of publishing houses, friends and of course with his family in Policka and friends in the then Czechoslovakia.

A brief biography of the composer could serve as the subject for a screenplay. Martinu's birthplace was Policka, a small town in the hilly countryside of the Vysocina (Uplands) on the border between Bohemia and Moravia. He was born here on the 8th of December 1890. At the time his family was living in a humble one-room dwelling in the tower of St. James's Church, where the whole family had moved when Bohuslav's father became a tower watchman, who watch for fires in the area and rang the bells as well as carrying on his original trade as a cobbler. The Martinus moved out of the tower in 1902, when Bohuslav was twelve. In 1906 he entered the violin class at the Prague Conservatory as a promising young talent but after four years he was expelled for indolence. He stayed in Prague and became a member of the Czech Philharmonic as one of the second violins under the direction of the outstanding conductor Vaclav Talich. In 1923 he went to Paris, where he studied composition with Albert Roussel, whose symphonic pieces had entirely captivated him when he encountered them in Czech Philharmonic's repertoire. He lived in Paris from 1923 to 1940, when he and his wife Charlotte were forced to flee from the Nazis to Portugal and then overseas. In the years 1941-1953 he lived in the USA, where apart from composing he taught composition at various music academies, universities and master classes. In the USA he won an enormous reputation as one of the most important composers of his time. After the Second World War he began to take trips back to Europe and from 1953 to his death in 1959 he divided his life between France, Italy and Switzerland. The last twenty years of his life he therefore spent abroad; in 1952 he became an American citizen and subsequently never returned to his homeland even for a visit.

"New and great horizons have opened up for me here"

(Paris, 1924)

What made Martinu move to Paris and stay there for the next seventeen years? One decisive moment was his visit to Paris on a concert tour with the orchestra of the National Theatre in 1919. For the young musician, Paris was a synonym for creative freedom, liberation from the humble conditions of his birthplace and from the traditionalist environment of Prague, dominated on the one hand by the German Neo-Romanticism and on the other by Czech National Revivalism. After half a year in Paris he wrote: "New and great horizons have opened up for me here, I don't seem to be the same as I was just six months ago." Martinu found himself in the company of the most important artists of the day: Igor Stravinsky, the members of Les Six, the conductor Sergei Koussevitzky, the organiser and choreographer Sergei Diaghilev with his celebrated Russian Ballet, and painters Pablo Picasso, Josef Sima and Jan Zrzavy.

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Still, after 1930 he was starting to consider a return home. An opportunity arose in 1935, when Martinu nursed hopes of the position opened by the death of Josef Suk at the master department of the Prague Conservatory. Since he only made the trip back to Prague in the vacations or for premieres of his work, however, and as he himself wrote had "had done nothing to prepare the ground in high places", he failed to get the post. "Who knows if it isn't better for me to be able to stay here, when after all it is a completely different milieu and it is more important for me to stay here. Nobody ever knows the good that may come out of something ..." This was how he reacted to his failure in Prague in a letter home. Apart from the desire to console his nearest and dearest, the letter shows a resignation to fate and a trace of distrust for the Czech musical world, where for some of his contemporaries he was merely a "French" composer, an imitator of Debussy and Stravinsky.

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"I know our tower is asking what has become of me"

(New York, 1950)

After 1936 Martinu's letters show an ever more intense desire to go home, but the growing threat of Nazism changed the situation entirely: "... I would already like to go back and work at home, but now of course everything has become much more difficult". His closest friends, the Sachers and Milos Safranek, ensured that the composer escaped the Nazis and reached the safety of the USA. With the end of the war there were once again genuine prospects for his return to Czechoslovakia, but after his failed pre-war attempt to get an appointment post as a professor, Martinu had developed a rooted distrust for the Czech music scene and was convinced he was neither welcome nor expected back at home: "After all, it's now almost a year since the liberation and so far no-one in official circles has even asked about me. Naturally I'm not going to go running after them." (From a letter to his family in Policka, March 1946). At this point accident intervened--Martinu suffered a serious head injury during a summer composing school in Great Barrington (Massachussetts) in 1946. Treatment was long, and while he was convalescing the political conditions in Czechoslovakia were moving in a direction inimical to artistic freedom. Martinu began to fear the reaction his return to Czechoslovakia might provoke and to wonder whether, once back there, he might lose the right to get out again and travel freely: "Whatever happens I have to be able to get back to the USA, because that is essential if I am not to lose what I have managed to achieve over here, and over here the pace of life is fast and people easily forget. "The communist coup in 1948 naturally made Martinu was even more sceptical, and he decided that it was more meaningful and safer to compose outside his homeland.

"My work is still Czech and connected with my homeland"

(New York, 1951)

The music of Bohuslav Martinu has many faces. In the course of his career it underwent many several transformations of style. Martinu was very sensitive to external musical impulses and always managed to incorporate them into his own work and exploit them in an admirable way. Over the years Martinu cultivated a great feeling for the specific features and potential of every instrument. He forged his own distinctive musical idiom and his music is recognisable after no more than a few bars. His is a musical language derived from the simplicity and melodiousness of Moravian and Bohemian folksong, the inventiveness with sound of Impressionism, the polyphony of English madrigal, the formal discipline of the Italian musical Baroque and the rhythmic, motoric influences of jazz. Many of his pieces are dedicated to friends among the important musicians of the day, and some of his work were written as commissions.

Harry Halbreich, author of the catalogue of the composer's works, divides Martinu's creative career into four stylistic periods, which also relate to the different places where he lived: the early period in Prague and Policka before his departure for Paris, the Paris period (1923-1940), the years spent in America (1941-1953) and the last creative phase associated with his years back in Europe (1953-1959).

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When Martinu was studying at the Prague Conservatory and later as a member of the Czech Philharmonic, the contemporary composer whose music most captivated him was Claude Debussy. He was fascinated by Debussy's harmonic freedom, the breadth of colour of his harmonies, his new concept of instrumentation and permissiveness of form. At the same time Martinu remained under the influence of the domestic classics Bedrich Smetana and Antonin Dvorak and even at this early stage his music manifested his fondness for Czech and Moravian folkore. In this period Martinu produced a great many songs and small piano pieces, of which the most successful was the three-part cycle Marionettes (Loutky, 1912, final part completed in 1923), and broke with his enchantment with impressionism in the ballet Istar based on an Ancient Babylonian saga.

As a second violinist in the Czech Philharmonic Martinu got to know the music of Albert Roussel, specifically the symphony Le Poeme de la Foret and the ballet Le Festin de l'Araignee. When Martinu arrived in Paris he immediately tracked down the composer and for a period became his pupil. In Roussel he found proportionality of musical expression, equilibrium of form, taste and order--in short, the virtues of French music that he had always admired. For Martinu, the second most important person that he encountered in Paris was Igor Stravinsky. His favourite works by Stravinsky were The Soldier's Tale (Histoire du soldat), Petrushka and The Wedding (Les Noces): "He stands in sharp opposition to Romanticism and subjectivism. He is positive and immediate." wrote Martinu in an article for the Czech press in 1924. Martinu's symphonic piece Half-Time (1924) is considered a turning point in his creative development. Written nine months into his stay in Paris it shows no trace of dreamy impressionism; instead, energy of rhythm, vivaciousness and audacious harmonic and instrumental techniques are to the fore. In terms of sound, the winds predominate, together with the piano part that now seems closer to percussion in style. Dissonant harmonies and pronounced rhythm reveal the influence of Stravinsky. Half-Time was inspired by the atmosphere of half-time at a football match, and the following masterpiece of the Paris period, La Bagarre (1926) is dedicated in theme to Charles Lindberg's successful flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

Martinu was open to the many stimuli that Paris offered. At the time this meant the avant-garde art movements of Dadaism and Surrealism, with whose leaders Martinu collaborated on the libretti of his operas: with the Dadaist playwright Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes on the operas Tears of the Knife / Larmes de couteau (1928) and the "film" opera Three Wishes / Les trois souhaits (1929) and later with the Surrealist playwright Georges Neveux on the opera Juliette (1937), which became Martinu's most famous operatic work. Nor did Jazz, very popular at the time, escape Martinu's attention. Martinu's intoxication with jazz lasted almost five years, starting in 1926, when he employs various degrees of stylisation of the foxtrot, black bottom, charleston and blues, in piano compositions, orchestral works (Jazz Suite for small orchestra, Le Jazz for large orchestra and vocal trio--both 1928) and very obviously in his operas (the Tears of the Knife and Three Wishes already mentioned) and the ballets (The Kitchen Revue/La revue de cuisine--1927, Check to the King/Echec au roi--1930).

Starting from 1930 a strong response to Czech folklore and also adoption of the Baroque concerto grosso as a formal model can be traced in Martinu's output. He sometimes used fragments of real folksongs in his compositions, but usually created his own motifs derived from the spirit of folk music. In this phase he wrote the remarkable musical dramatic work--the ballet with dance The Chap-Book (Spalicek, 1931-1932), the opera cycle of four miracle plays The Plays of Mary (Hry o Marii, 1933-1934) and the radio opera The Voice of the Forest (Hlas lesa, 1935). The core works of his "folklore" period also include the cantata Garland (Kytice, 1935).

Baroque concerto grosso is the influence least often mentioned in relation to Martinu, but in fact it had a fundamental effect on his work and represents one of its most remarkable and frequent hallmarks. Martinu was entranced by the music of Corelli and Bach's Brandenburg concertos; he found in concerto grosso the embodiment of his ideal of form and sound. The "trilogy" of orchestral pieces for chamber orchestra--Concerto Grosso (1937), Tre Ricercari (1938) and Double Concerto (1938) are among his most important works from this period.

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In the USA Martinu was inspired to write five symphonies (1942-1946). The sixth and last symphony differs from the others (even in its very name Fantaisies Symphoniques) and was finished seven years later (1951-1953). In Martinu's output considered as a whole the symphonies represent a self-contained series of masterpieces and occupy a unique, and it might be said a dominating position.

Martinu's late period is dominated by three works: the opera The Greek Passion, the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 5 and the symphonic The Parables. He found the subject for his last opera, The Greek Passion, in Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis's novel Christ Recrucified. He worked on it for almost three years and it can be considered his "swan song". The titles of the different movements of the symphonic piece for large orchestra The Parables are inspired by the literary works of Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Georges Neveux (Parable of the Statue, The Garden, The Boat), but this is not so much programmatic music as free fantasy, a kind of neo-impressionism deriving once again from the music of Debussy.

Despite all the shifts of style, we can consistently identify Martinu's music on the basis of a number of fundamental features. These are rhythmic pregnancy and melodics based on domestic folklore, syncopation, and lucidity and balance of proportion in musical form. Over the years Martinu cultivated a great sensitivity to the specific features of each instrument, and so it is hard to imagine his music played by instruments different from those for which he wrote a particular part. Another distinctive characteristic is the frequent use of piano; we find it in a near majority of Martinu's compositions.

"Not everyone will understand me immediately"

(Paris, 1931)

What was Martinu really like as a man? How did those around him see him and how did he see himself? As he himself mentions when recalling Policka, his early childhood in the tower in Policka (1890-1902) had a huge effect on his perception of the world. Here he created his own childish world, which always remained present in him at some deep level. "Entirely isolated from the outside world as if in some lighthouse, I had nothing else to do for work or for entertainment than to record in memory various pictures that could be seen from the tower (...)--everything in miniature, with small houses and little people, and above them a vast and boundless space. I think this space is one of my biggest impressions from childhood (...) Not the small interests of the people, the cares, pains or even the joys I saw from a great distance, or to put it better from a great height. It is that space that is always before my eyes, and it seems to me that it is the space I am always searching for in my works. Back then people had no special distinctive appearance of their own, but just seemed to be part of the picture of nature like trees, paths, birds. All these were events that cannot be forgotten. "Martinu considered his unusual childhood in the tower one of the most important impulses behind his work: it was in this period that "the longing to get that space into my composition, and then the longing to express and depict form" took root in him. Martinu was rather shy and timid by nature. He did not enjoy staying for long in the bustle of society, and liked to escape from big cities. Visits to the countryside and mountains were his frequent refuge. He had a great sense of humour, as is attested by his sketchbooks of small drawings and cartoons and the memories of his friends.

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Everyone who met him was astounded by his extraordinary erudition, intellect and sense of humour. His knowledge of literature and art was remarkable. Ever since his Prague years he had filled his free moments with reading, or going to the theatre and exhibitions. In Paris and in America he became a regular film goer and admirer of cinema. He was also interested in philosophy and natural science. Martinu was active as a writer as well as a musician. In his first Paris years he sent pieces on Parisian musical life to Czech magazines, and during his time in America he wrote three diaries with philosophical-aesthetic reflections on composition, the role of the composer, and listeners. He produced programme commentaries for twenty of his works. He wrote the libretti to his own last five operas on the basis of literary sources (What Men Live By--1952, The Marriage--1952, Mirandolina--1954, Ariane--1958, The Greek Passion--1959). Martinu spoke French and during his stay in the USA considered it essential to master English as well. As he himself wrote, "English is very hard, but I will manage it. We communicate in French a lot and there are plenty of Czechs here as well." He also had the basics of German but used this language the least as is evident for example from his surviving correspondence.

The serious head injury that he suffered while staying in the small town of Great Barrington (Massachussets) in the USA in 1946, where he was teaching composition on a summer school, had permanent physical and psychological effects. One July evening he fell more than two metres from a poorly protected balcony. The results of the accident were to last for practically the whole remainder of his life. He complained of pain in the head, buzzing in the right ear, loss of balance and exhaustion. There was also a perceptible change in his behaviour: he was far more sensitive, reacted more slowly in conversation, and sometimes seemed not to be entirely aware of what was going on around him.

His relationship to religion and the church remains uncertain. Martinu never wrote a latin mass nor a musical arrangement of any of the Latin liturgical texts (The Field Mass from 1939 is based on texts by the writer Jiri Mucha and Czech prayers). On the other hand religious motifs appear in his operas (The Plays of Mary and the Greek Passion), and in his letters he writes in times of trouble of faith in God's plan and the meaningfulness of the events around him. He felt himself to be an observer of life and in his later years accepted changes and reverses in his own life with humility and resignation: "Do as we will, what has to happen will happen, (...) and perhaps the Lord God will not abandon us and we shall meet again earlier than we think." (From a letter home to Policka, March 1939).

"I doubt I shall ever see the money"

(New York, 1950)

In monographs on Martinu we often find it claimed that Martinu had difficulty making ends meet right up to the end of the Second World War. Certainly he struggled financially in his first years in Paris, when he lived on no more than a scholarship from the Ministry of Education and the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts, and a small irregular contribution from the community and mayoral office in Policka. Subsequently over his lifetime Martinu won several awards carrying financial rewards: a Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts Prize, first prize from the Coolidge Foundation, and twice a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

In addition to composing, from the forties Martinu occasionally taught students at music school. He taught at the Berkshire Music Centre in 1942 and in 1946, then at the Mannes School of Music in New York (1947-1948, again in 1955), in 1948-1951 at Princeton University in the State of New Jersey, in 1955-56 at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and finally in 1956-57 at the American Academy in Rome as "composer in residence", which involved less the direct obligation to teach than the role of encouraging and supporting students in their studies and providing artistic guidance.

His main source of income was therefore royalties from performances of his work and a share in the profits from sales of his scores and recordings of his music. Martinu was a member of the authorial copyright protection organisation based in Prague known as the OSA; membership meant that the organisation collected payment for the performance of his work at home and abroad and passed it on to the composer. The whole situation became difficult after the Second World War, when the National Bank in Czechoslovakia refused to pay Martinu his royalties in either dollars or French francs. Martinu's main source of income was therefore cut off. In the end the royalties were at least paid out to the composer's siblings in crowns. The fees from the publication of his scores were tied up in Czechoslovakia in the same way. Martinu therefore left the OSA, in 1952 became a member of the American copyright protection association ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and started to publish his music with foreign publishing houses (Boosey & Hawkes, Universal Edition, Barenreiter-Verlag).

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When considering the composer's material situation we should not forget the substantial help he received from friends and patrons. He was able to ride out the toughest situations in his life thanks to Maja and Paul Sacher--his Swiss patrons. Maja Sacher was the heiress of the Roche pharmaceutical concern and Paul Sacher was a conductor, who founded the Basle Chamber Orchestra. The Sachers funded Martinu's journey to the USA and in his last years made it possible for him to devote himself to composing at their country estate in Schonenberg by Basle.

Martinu Yesterday and Today

Martinu made a huge name for himself in the USA in the forties and fifties. His compositions were premiered by the leading American orchestras: The Boston Symphony Orchestra (Symphonies nos. 1, 3 and 6, Concerto for Violin no. 2), The Cleveland Orchestra (Symphony no. 2), The Philadelphia Orchestra (Symphony no. 4, Concerto for Two Pianos). In the USA Martinu was hailed as the "Dvorak" of the twentieth century. Numerous performances of his works followed in Europe, above all thanks to close co-operation between orchestras and soloists (Kammerorchestr Basel, Wiener Philharmoniker, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande). Martinu also found promoters among the most important conductors of his day--Sergei Koussevitzky, Charles Munch, Ernest Ansermet, Paul Sacher, Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, Walter Straram, Rafael Kubelik, Vaclav Talich and Karel Ancerl. In the fifties Martinu's choral works and cantatas were frequently performed in Czechoslovakia. Since the seventies Martinu has acquired a permanent place in the repertoire of many domestic ensembles, his works have been republished and he has become one of the most frequently performed of domestic composers. Leading soloists have included his concertos in their repertoires: the pianists Germaine Leroux and Rudolf Firkusny, the cellist Alexander Vechtomov or the violinists Samuel Dushkin and Mischa Elman. Performance of the music of Bohuslav Martinu abroad has ebbed and flowed more than once over the last two decades. After a great upsurge in performance of his works in his jubilee year 1990 (which was most intense in Czechoslovakia), there was a certain decline, but then 1998/1999 proved to be a break-though in certain respects. First there was a week-long festival in London organised by BBC Radio, the Barbican Centre concert hall and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Since then the number of performances of Martinu's operas on world opera stages has been rising, for example in London (The Greek Passion 1999 and 2004), Bregenz (Juliette 2002), Paris (Juliette 2002), Bremen (2003), Thessaloniki (Greek Passion 2005) and elsewhere. Since 1995 a Bohuslav Martinu Festival has taken place regularly in Prague, with appearances by the violinists Josef Suk and Bohuslav Matousek, for example, the soprano Magdalena Kozena, and conductors Jiri Belohlavek and Christopher Hogwood.

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An international peak is expected with the approaching 50th anniversary of Martinu's death, which will be marked by concert organisers and opera houses in dozens of places in Europe and overseas.

The Bohuslav Martinu Foundation, set up in 1975, takes care of the composer's musical legacy. This institution supports the performance of Martinu's works, contributes financially to the running of the Bohuslav Martinu Memorial in Policka and helps to fund the Bohuslav Martinu Institute, which it has founded.

The Bohuslav Martinu Institute in Prague serves as a research and information centre for everyone interested in the music of Bohuslav Martinu and, more widely, the music of the 20th century. The institute gathers and centralises printed Bohuslav Martinu music materials, and also CD recordings and old archival sound recordings, originals or copies of manuscripts not only from public institutions, but also autograph sources from private owners. Thanks to the ongoing project of digitalisation some of the sources are also accessible in electronic versions. The institute is striving to acquire other source materials such as concert and opera programmes and to assemble the composer's extensive correspondence with important figures.

One of the most important institute projects is the Bohuslav Martinu Complete Edition--i.e. publication of all the compositions of Martinu in the form of note material produced on the basis of study and comparison of all accessible sources. Given Martinu's extraordinarily prolific output, this is a long-term project and will take several decades. The BM Institute also operates web pages www.martinu.cz and publishes a Bohuslav Martinu Newsletter--which comes out 3 times yearly in English. It contributes to the publication of musical materials and production of publications about Martinu (most recently the catalogue of works by Harry Halbreich: Bohuslav Martinu. Werkverzeichnis und Biografie, Schott, Mainz 2007).

Last but not least the institute organises an annual festival, Bohuslav Martinu Days.