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Bohuslav Martinů (December 8, 1890 – August 28, 1959) was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech ancestry.Martinu wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and taught music in his home town. In 1923 Martinů left Czechoslovakia for Paris, and deliberately withdrew from the Romantic style in which he had been trained. In the 1930s he experimented with expressionism and constructivism, and became an admirer of current European technical developments, exemplified by his orchestral works Half-time and La Bagarre. He also adopted jazz idioms, for instance in his Kuchyňské revue ("Kitchen Revue").In the early 1930's he found his main font for composition style, the neo-classical as developed by Stravinsky. With this, he greatly expanded to become an amazingly prolific composer, composing volleys of well-crafted chamber, orchestral, choral and instrumental works, and was able to do this with amazing dispatch. His use of the piano obliggato became his signature.
His great symphonic career began when he emigrated to the United States in 1941, fleeing the German invasion of France, to compose his six symphonies that were performed by all the major US orchestras. There is compelling evidence that Martinu had Asperger syndrome, perhaps the first composer to become so well documented. This autistic condition rendered him to be a compulsive composer so he could compose with extraordinary ease. However, this gift caused his reputation to become suspect and was denigrated by some musicologists who, unable to explain it, cited him as a "flawed" composer, although no background to support this has been provided. In 1956, he returned to live in Europe and died in Switzerland in 1959.Only now is his reputation being resurrected with the support of newly discovered facts about his autistic personality. |