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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.

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.

Die bemerkenswerte Zahl von Bohuslav Martinus Werken, aber auch ihre Gattungsbreite und stilistische Vielfalt lassen eine einfache Einordnung des OEuvres auf den ersten Blick unmoeglich erscheinen. Bei genauerer Betrachtung kristallisieren sich jedoch aesthetische Konstanten heraus, die zwar nicht auf einen einheitlichen Stil, jedoch auf eine waehrend Jahrzehnten nahezu unveraenderte Musikauffassung verweisen. Auf der Grundlage seines Ideals erprobte Martinu zeitlebens unterschiedlichste Formen, Gattungen und Stile. Das Ziel dieses Bandes ist es, diese kompositionstechnische Flexibilitaet auf der Basis eines verbindlichen aesthetischen Standpunktes in unterschiedlichen Perspektiven zur Diskussion zu stellen. Die Autoren beleuchten Martinus saemtliche Schaffensperioden: die Jahre im Prag der 1910er, im Paris der 1920er und 30er, im New York der 1940er sowie im Westeuropa der 1950er-Jahre. Den thematischen Rahmen der Publikation bildet die Tatsache, dass das verbindende Charakteristikum des in einem Zeitraum von ueber einem halben Jahrhundert entstandenen OEuvres paradoxerweise ein immer wieder vollzogener Stilwandel in der Tonsprache - gleichsam eine Kontinuitaet des Wandels - ist. The remarkable quantity of works composed by Bohuslav Martinu, as well as their breadth in genre and diversity in style, make a simple ordering of his oeuvre seem impossible at first glance. Upon closer observation, however, aesthetic constants crystalize that, while not indicating a unified style, do show a conception of music that remained almost unchanged over the course of the decades. During his lifetime Martinu explored the most diverse forms, genres, and styles on the basis of his ideal. The objective of this volume is to open a discussion, from various perspectives, of this flexibility in compositional technique based on a unifying aesthetic standpoint. The authors illuminate all of Martinu's compositional periods: the years in Prague from 1906 to 1923, in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s, in New York during the 1940s, and in Western Europe during the 1950s. The topical framework of the publication is determined by the fact that the unifying characteristic of this oeuvre, composed over the span of more than half a century, is paradoxically an ever-more complete stylistic transformation of musical speech - continuity of change, as it were.

Am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts setzt sich die tschechische Gesellschaft intensiv mit neuen spirituellen Strömungen wie Theosophie, Anthroposophie und Okkultismus auseinander. Durch die Übersetzungen der Werke von Huysmans, Strauss, Nietzsche, Steiner und anderen einflußreichen europäischen Denkern gerät der Katholizismus immer stärker in den Konflikt mit der Moderne. Die Bewegung Katolická moderna versucht in Böhmen den Katholizismus zu erneuern. Zu den Mitarbeitern der Zeitschrift Nový život zählen wichtige tschechische Künstlerpersönlichkeiten. Auch die Autoren der Zeitschrift Moderní revue streben eine entsprechende Reform religiös ausgerichteter Kunst an.Die tschechische Musik dieser Zeit widerspiegelt die vielfältige Auseinandersetzung mit den neuen Denkrichtungen. Charakteristisch für die betreffenden Werke ist der Synkretismus in Form einer persönlichen Synthese aus verschiedenen Formen der Spiritualität. In diesem Kongressband werden neben den Beiträgen zu diesen Fragen bislang unbekannte Dokumente zur tschechischen Musik der Jahrhundertwende veröffentlicht und die Rezeptionswege von massgebenden Komponisten der Zeit (Dvořák, Janáček, Hába, Schulhoff, Novák, Martinů) untersucht.At the end of the 19th century, Czech society was preoccupied with new spiritual trends such as theosophy, anthroposophy, pantheism and occultism. The ideas of Schuré, Huysmans, Péladan, Renan, Strauss, Nietzsche, Steiner, Blavatsky and other influential European thinkers were compiled and made available thanks to numerous translations. At the same time, Catholicism was coming into increasing conflict with modernism. One of the attempts at its revival in Bohemia was represented by the movement Catholic Modernism. The contributors to the review Nový život (New Life) were distinct personalities of Czech cultural life. The authors of the magazine Moderní revue (Modern Review) strove for reform of religion-oriented arts too. Czech music of that period reflects the multifaceted encounters with the new intellectual trends. Works are characterised by syncretism, in the form of a personal synthesis of various types of spirituality. In addition, the congress proceedings comprise research into hitherto unknown documents dealing with Czech music at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the paths of reception of the foremost composers of the time (Dvořák, Janáček, Hába, Schulhoff, Novák, Martinů).