Martinu and His World

A collection of essays and documents illuminating the work of Bohuslav Martinu, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival. Bohuslav Martinu was one of the most extraordinary and prolific composers of the twentieth century. Martinu and His World offers a portrait of the composer in all his complexity. Born in the present-day Czech Republic, Martinu 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. Martinu 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 Dvor- American jazz of the 1920s, English Renaissance madrigals, the late Baroque concerto grosso, French Impressionism, Czech and Moravian folk