Novy Spalícek (The New Chap-Book)

Bohata mila (The Rich Sweetheart)

Opusteny mily (The Foresaken Lover)

Touha (Longing)

Zvedavé dievca (The Inquisitive Girl)

Veselé dievca (The Cheerful Girl)

Smutny mily (The Unhappy Lover)

Prosba (The Request)

Vysoká Veza (The Tall Tower)

Settings of Czech and Moravian folk-songs like Novy Spalícek were what Martinu wrote when, he said, he was “not composing.” Bearing in mind that he was one of the most prolific composers of his generation as well as an obsessive reader and smoker, one wonders how much time he had when he was not composing, reading, or lighting cigarettes. It is known, however, that he presented one such song a day to his pupil-mistress Vitézslava Kaprálová (another time-consuming passion) when he was living in Paris in the 1930s and that there were many more where they came from - which suggests that the few dozen published folk-song settings represent only a small proportion of his activity in this area.

Although the eight songs of Novy Spalícek are usually presented in English as “New Miniatures,” the title actually means “The New Chap-Book” and is intended to align the work with the opera-ballet Spalícek, also based on Czech folklore, that Martinu had composed in Paris in 1931. The Novy Spalícek settings were written eleven years later, not long after the composer settled in the United States in war-time exile from Europe, and they no doubt reflect a need to renew contact with his roots. Certainly, the Moravian folk texts (taken from the monumental collection assembled by Franticek Susil a hundred years earlier) are treated with the affection and idiomatic authenticity proper to a musician who spent most of the first twenty years of his life in a small town on the border between Moravia and Bohemia.

The national origin of the lively dance rhythms of Bohata mila is instantly recognisable. If the piano’s trumpet calls evoking the battlefield are an unexpected elaboration in this context, the simple chordal accompaniment with the occasional doubling of the sadly inflected vocal line in Opusteny mily is entirely characteristic of Martinu’s economy when he was “not composing.” There is a matching contrast in expression between Touha, a dance in a rhythm similar to that of Bohata mila, and the curiously touching Zvedavé dievca. The shortest song in the set, Veselé dievca, another dance, is followed by the longest, Smutny mily, a lament with a piano accompaniment that is simple in texture but dramatically emotional in its harmonies. Prosba is a dreamily unpretentious little prayer, Vysoká Veza an enigma so inconclusive in its brevity that it needs a short piano postlude to complete the set.