Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Permissions
- I The Early Years
- II The 1920s in Paris
- III Last Years in Paris
- IV The Melodic Style
- V The Harmonic Style
- VI Texture and Orchestration
- VII The First Symphony
- VIII The Second Symphony
- IX The Third Symphony
- X The Fourth Symphony
- XI The Fifth Symphony
- XII Between the Symphonies
- XIII Fantaisies Symphoniques
- XIV Beyond the Symphonies
- XV Conclusion
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index of Works
- Technical Index
- General Index
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Permissions
- I The Early Years
- II The 1920s in Paris
- III Last Years in Paris
- IV The Melodic Style
- V The Harmonic Style
- VI Texture and Orchestration
- VII The First Symphony
- VIII The Second Symphony
- IX The Third Symphony
- X The Fourth Symphony
- XI The Fifth Symphony
- XII Between the Symphonies
- XIII Fantaisies Symphoniques
- XIV Beyond the Symphonies
- XV Conclusion
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index of Works
- Technical Index
- General Index
Summary
Martinů’s melodic style is undoubtedly the most alluring and distinctive aspect of his mature musical personality. Many of his admirers are won over initially by the directly expressive qualities of the melody, by its flexibility and rhythmic verve. On many occasions, especially in the Symphonies, his melodic style goes well beyond the merely attractive: sympathetic commentators have used emotive words like ‘joyous’, even ‘life-enhancing’, to describe its appeal. His themes are memorable, often apparently simple, but at the same time have an immense capacity for self-generation and are capable of sustaining impressive symphonic arguments. Yet these very qualities may have acted as a deterrent to serious musical analysis of his style. There have been few attempts made to delve beneath the surface of this music to see what lies there. Perhaps it has been generally assumed that a melodic style which appears so guileless has few secrets to divulge. Martinů’s music is not the sort which makes an analyst rub his hands in glee in anticipation of the discoveries to be made within, and so it has been largely left alone. He himself only occasionally wrote analyses of his own works, and to the programme note for the premiere of the Fourth Symphony in 1945 he added the following cautionary note, stressing the limited usefulness he saw for analysis:
The whole analysis can give a picture of the plan and the structure of the work, but it does not bring us much nearer to understanding the form, which is the spirit of the work and which depends on many other factors than the work with the themes and the structural design, the balance of the material used. The structure of the work is something fixed and definite, whereas the form is alive, and its expression, symbol, is always a new reactional element at the moment of the work’s realization, it is ‘sensation’ actively and plastically realized, not in the course of analysis, but again in the active approach and attitude of the listener to the work, that is, in the course of the actual communication, performance and committing to the memory and its absorption into the spiritual process.
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- Martinu and the Symphony , pp. 101 - 126Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010