Bohuslav Martinů
(1890–1959)
Who Was
Bohuslav Martinů?
A Brief Introduction
By Jim Samson
Bohuslav Martinů was one of the few Czech composers to achieve international standing after Leoš Janáček. Born in the present-day Czech Republic, he lived for much of his life outside his homeland, including extended periods in Paris and New York. These settings influenced his music: the interwar years in Paris produced works with a pronounced neoclassical orientation—responsive to Igor Stravinsky, and to the parodic tendencies of Les Six (a 20th-century group of composers)—while the move to America resulted, as it did also for Béla Bartók, in a marked simplification of style. One of the most prolific 20th-century composers, Martinů composed at a high speed, and in just about every vocal and instrumental genre. This facility occasionally worked against him, for it became too easy to dismiss his responsiveness to new ideas as shallow eclecticism, and thus to miss the individuality that underpins surface borrowings. At the very least, his voluminous output has ensured a corpus of challenging and high-quality ensemble pieces for performers today.
Early Years: In His Homeland
Born in Polička—a small town near the border between Bohemia and Moravia—Martinů spent his first 12 years living in an apartment at the top of the local church tower. (His father was the church sexton.) His musical gifts were quickly recognized, and in 1906 he was accepted as a student at the Prague Conservatory, though he was later expelled for “incorrigible negligence.” He escaped conscription during the war years, and in the midst of Europe’s turmoil he produced a plethora of works that drew heavily on folk music from his homeland. He earned his living as a violin teacher and an occasional performer with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, while at the same time honing his compositional skills. Following the success of his Česka rhapsodie (Czech Rhapsody) in Prague in 1919, he had some lessons from Josef Suk and produced several works of real substance, notably the String Quartet No. 1 (1918) and the orchestral triptych, Míjející půlnoc (Vanishing Midnight, 1922).
Middle Period: Modernism and the Paris Years
As a member of the Czech Philharmonic, Martinů traveled to European capitals on several occasions, and was especially attracted to the cultural charisma of Paris. In 1923, a modest state scholarship enabled him to move there as a student of Albert Roussel, and although he made frequent return visits to Polička and Prague, he remained in the French capital for almost two decades, living in often straitened circumstances with Charlotte Quennehen, whom he married in 1931. His music during this period was experimental in character and included pastiche theatre pieces, such as the ballet score La revue de cuisine (The Kitchen Revue, 1927) and the opera Les trois souhaits (The Three Wishes, 1929)—works that register his enthusiasm for jazz. His prodigious output during these years also included numerous, neoclassical instrumental works, including several of his concertos. It is not hard to detect the guiding hand of Stravinsky in much of this music.
His music during this period was experimental in character and included pastiche theatre pieces... —works that register his enthusiasm for jazz. His prodigious output during these years also included numerous, neoclassical instrumental works, including several of his concertos. It is not hard to detect the guiding hand of Stravinsky in much of this music.
In the 1930s, Martinů’s reputation burgeoned, with performances of his compositions in Berlin, London, and Paris. At the same time his musical style lost some of the fashionable modernist gestures associated with his early Paris years. One high point was the opera Julietta, which premiered in Prague in 1938. As with other works from the late 1930s, its musical idiom might be characterized as a form of “moderate modernism,” with reference points in Claude Debussy and Stravinsky. International recognition seemed to beckon, but shortly after the successful premiere of Julietta, political storm clouds gathered, and Martinů, who had worked to support the Czech National Council in Paris, only just managed to escape the city before the German invasion. After a somewhat frenetic period, during which he and Charlotte lived for some months in southern France, he moved to the US in 1941.
Late Period: New York and After
It was not an easy transition. Martinů was subject to major bouts of depression at this time (there have been suggestions, albeit contested, that he had Asperger’s syndrome), and there were also marital difficulties due to his infidelities. However, his creativity was undimmed, and, with the support of Serge Koussevitzky, his First Symphony was performed in 1942—another five would follow—and he issued a constant flow of compositions in a markedly more lyrical, accessible style. Among the finest works of this period are the Písničky na jednu stránku (Songs on One Page, 1943), the Second Violin Concerto (also 1943), and the String Quartet No. 7 (1947). In 1953, he returned with Charlotte to France, where he seemed to find a measure of contentment, and then to Switzerland, where he produced a final version of the work that several authorities consider his masterpiece: the opera The Greek Passion. Shortly after the opera’s completion in 1957, Martinů’s health deteriorated rapidly. In August 1959, he succumbed to cancer.
Martinů: Nonet for Wind and Strings
Legacy
Few major composers are as difficult to place as Martinů. The sheer volume of his output proved an obstacle to critical acceptance, and often seemed more attuned to an earlier age—an age of Kapellmeisters. Likewise, the catholicity of his musical style(s) hindered appreciation at a time when anything beyond the secular modernist citadel seemed to lack the stamp of authentic art. As a result, his music occupied a space close to, but not quite at the center of, our 20th-century musical canon. In the 21st century, however, there have been signs of reappraisal as music lovers, performers, and commentators seem to accept more readily that the value of a musical work can be separated from particular stylistic allegiances. There has also been active promotion, with an annual Martinů festival in Prague, a Martinů Foundation, and a growing body of English-language scholarship addressing his music.
Watching and Listening
The three works by Martinů in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Digital Archive all date from his later years. The Variations on a Theme of Rossini for Cello and Piano, written for the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, appeared in 1942, shortly after the move to North America. The elastic rhythms of the expressive slow variation (No. 3) are notated with considerable craft, but the fun in this piece is in hearing how distortions of the classical background—the theme, from the opera La Cenerentola, is at times lost from view—take us into unexpected territory, veering off the rails in ever more inventive ways.
The moto perpetuo rhythms in these variations, replete with nervous energy, are echoed in the outer movements of the Duo No. 1 for Violin and Viola (“Three Madrigals”) of 1947, with notable folk-based excursions and some chorale-like textures in the last movement. But the central madrigal is truly extraordinary—especially its opening soundscape, in which the two instruments eschew dialogue, their muted tremolos coalescing in a single, composite sonority.
Composed in 1959, the Nonet for Winds and Strings was one of Martinů’s very last works. It was written for the Czech Nonet—one of the oldest chamber ensembles in the world—which gave the piece its first performance a month before the composer died. The work provides us with a masterclass in scoring, embracing in turn full, quasi-orchestral textures, alternating wind and string passages, and emergent solos projected against variegated backcloths. It is hard not to hear this work as a final farewell to Martinů’s distant homeland. There is a powerful intensity in its deeply expressive slow movement. And there is an ensuing catharsis: a bucolic, folkloric finale, all sunshine and light.
