Overview

A collection of essays and documents illuminating the work of Bohuslav Martinů, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival. Bohuslav Martinů was one of the most extraordinary and prolific composers of the twentieth century. Martinů and His World offers a portrait of the composer in all his complexity. Born in the present-day Czech Republic, Martinů was rendered stateless as a result of events around World War II and the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. He lived for more than a decade in the United States, where he had great success, and died in Switzerland. Martinů composed more than four hundred works in all genres of instrumental and vocal music, and infused each with a special combination of the lyrical and the dramatic. Alongside an unerring sense of form, his works draw on a kaleidoscope of elements from such sources as Dvořák, American jazz of the 1920s, English Renaissance madrigals, the late Baroque concerto grosso, French Impressionism, Czech and Moravian folk songs, and the contemporary music of his day. This volume pays special attention to Martinů's little-known operatic works and presents for the first time both a recently discovered personal diary and a series of interviews with important figures who were part of his American years. Martinů and His World reveals the composer as an essential voice of his time, an original thinker about music past and present, who lived through the political complexities of the twentieth century and stood up to them both as a human being and as an artist.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ales Brezina ,  Michael Beckerman
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9780226845715

ISBN 10:   0226845710
Pages:   384
Publication Date:   12 August 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Awaiting stock  

Table of Contents

Permissions and Credits Acknowledgments Introduction: Martinů and His Worlds MICHAEL BECKERMAN Part I. Operatic Perspectives Office for Dreaming—or the Simple Future JIŘÍ GRUŠA TRANSLATED BY SUSAN H. GILLESPIE “We Have No Railway Station”: Juliette or the Renunciation of Memory ALEŠ BŘEZINA Byzantine Music in Martinů’s Opera The Greek Passion MARIOS CHRISTOU Meditation on the First Ave Maria of Bohuslav Martinů’s Sister Paskalina JON KANTOR MEADOW Ambiguous Historicism in Martinů’s The Marriage MARTIN NEDBAL The Long Shadow of Juliette: Martinů’s Late Musical Aesthetic and the Fantaisies symphoniques (Symphony No. 6) IVANA RENTSCH TRANSLATED BY SUSAN H. GILLESPIE Part II. Experiments in Instrumental Music from Baroque to Jazz Martinů and the Reduction of Music in the 1920s GISELHER SCHUBERT TRANSLATED BY SUSAN H. GILLESPIE Negotiating the “Concerto Grosso type” in Paris and Princeton: Martinů’s Multi-Soloist Concertante Works from a Generational Perspective BRIAN S. LOCKE “I changed practically nothing”: Bohuslav Martinů’s Collaboration on La Revue de cuisine ALEŠ BŘEZINA TRANSLATED BY ADAM PRENTIS Part III. Escapes and Arrivals Martinů, Benjamin, and the Changing Experience of Historical Time AXEL KÖRNER “To My Countrymen—Workers of Cleveland”: The World Premiere of Bohuslav Martinů’s Symphony No. 2 MARKÉTA KRATOCHVÍLOVÁ & MAREK PECHAČ TRANSLATED BY ADAM PRENTIS Challenging Modernism: Bohuslav Martinů’s Works at the Venice International Festival of Contemporary Music VINCENZINA C. OTTOMANO TRANSLATED BY COURTNEY QUAINTANCE Part IV. Documents and Editions More Than Just Corrected Notation: The Bohuslav Martinů Complete Edition ALEŠ BŘEZINA TRANSLATED BY ADAM PRENTIS On the Complete Edition of Bohuslav Martinů’s Correspondence VÍT ZOUHAR Martinů’s Notebook of Dreams INTRODUCED AND ANNOTATED BY MICHAEL BECKERMAN Martinů in the U.S.A.: Interviews with the Composer’s American Friends and Students CONDUCTED BY ALEŠ BŘEZINA EDITED AND INTRODUCED BY MICHAEL BECKERMAN AND ALEŠ BŘEZINA Part V. Coda Music and Politics in the Twentieth Century: The Parallel Lives of Bohuslav Martinů and Rudolf Firkušný LEON BOTSTEIN Index Notes on the Contributors

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Author Information

Aleš Březina is a Czech composer, the director of the Bohuslav Martinů Institute in Prague, and chairman of the editorial board of the Bohuslav Martinů Complete Edition. His critical edition of The Epic of Gilgamesh earned the Best Edition Award from the Association of German Music Publishers in 2016. Michael Beckerman is Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor in the Department of Music at New York University. He has edited two previous volumes in the Bard Music Festival series: Janáček and His World and Dvořák and His World. He is the author of Martinů’s Mysterious Accident and New Worlds of Dvořák.

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