Notes for: July 31, 2007
Bohuslav Martinů was the most important Czech composer in the quarter-century following the death of Leoš Janáček in 1928. Unlike Smetana, Dvořák and Janáček, however, he was drawn strongly to other musical innovations underway in Europe as well as to Czech national idioms and culture. As a result, he spent most of his creative years outside Czechoslovakia, and his music encompasses a variety of styles and influences in addition to the Czech folk songs that remained in his memory.
After studying the violin at the Prague Conservatory, Martinů played for ten years in the Czech Philharmonic, but despite his lack of training in composition he became more interested in writing music than playing it. In 1923, convinced that he could develop no further in Prague as a composer, Martinů moved to Paris to study with Albert Roussel, the most influential French musician of the day. Roussel encouraged him to pursue his creative instincts and ideas, but under the discipline of logical thought and counterpoint. In the next two decades, as a resident of Paris, he produced a flow of compositions – opera, orchestra, ballet and chamber music – and won wide international recognition.
After the German occupation of Paris in 1940, Martinů was blacklisted by the Nazis and forced to seek refuge in southern France. After a year of living in deprivation, he and his wife finally secured visas and migrated to the United States. He became a professor of composition at Princeton, and his orchestral works were performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In September, 1945, he returned to Czechoslovakia to teach composition at the Prague Conservatory, but was unable to settle down under Communist regimentation. During his final decade, he lived in Prague, New York and Switzerland, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1952.
Although composed in Paris, this work originated in 1927 as a ballet for performance back home in Prague. Martinů was asked to write a tongue-in-cheek curtain-raiser, entitled Temptation of the Saintly Pot, in which the dancers play a variety of cooking utensils caught in a naive episode of kitchen life.
The plot: Pot and Lid are engaged to be married, but Pot succumbs to the flattery of Stirring Stick, and Dishcloth flirts with Lid but is challenged to a duel by Broom. Pot changes her mind about Stirring Stick, but meanwhile Lid has walked out of the kitchen in a huff. The situation is cleared up when an enormous foot appears from the wings and kicks Lid back on the stage. Pot and Lid kiss and make up, while Stirring Stick goes off with Dishcloth.
Three years later, back in Paris, Martinů arranged ten of the ballet’s movements into a four-movement sextet for clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, cello, violin and piano under the title La Revue de Cuisine. The sextet was published in Paris shortly after its performance, but the score of the full ballet was lost until its discovery in Basel, Switzerland in the early 1990s.
The four movements of the sextet are entitled: “Prologue,” “Tango,” “Charleston” and “Final.” In the full ballet, “Tango” is subtitled, “Danse d’amour;” “Charleston” accompanies the duel between Lid and Broom; and “Final” involves an opening piano solo marked “Tempo di marcia” and switches among 2/4, 3/8 and 4/8 rhythms.
Jazz influences are heard through much of the sextet, the piano playing in dissonance, the trumpet muted in the style of the jazz bands of the day, and the cello and double bass playing pizzicato also in jazz style.