| Content | Bohuslav Martinů asks Josef Hutter for a favour. Since he himself does not want to keep responding to criticism, he asks him to publish a few facts. Ballet WHO IS THE MOST POWERFUL IN THE WORLD? Composed in early 1922 while he was studying with Josef Suk. All he knew of Igor Stravinsky was that he was a composer and wrote something wild, horrible and musically he didn't know him at all. He only knew of a performance of The Soldier's Tale and Pribautki in 1923. BM feels stupid because it seems like his older stuff is influenced by Stravinsky. He came to Paris in 1924 and his first works from Paris resemble Stravinsky, yet he couldn't have known his technique in such a short time. BM complains about the criticism of his work, implying that he would only copy other people's scores all his life, namely those of Claude Debussy, JS, Richard Strauss and now IS and Darius Milhaud, about whom he will tell JH his personal opinion. BM writes that these composers cannot be simply compared side by side. BM feels that it is unbelievable in our country that a Czech could invent something or arrive at something on his own. He feels that he is denied the right to have his work judged worthily. Or perhaps it is so stupid that there really is nothing to it. BM is of the opinion that other composers can have an effect on him, just as they do on other musicians. However, this is not the case with them. He gives the example of Osvaldo Chlubna, who writes a piece that is both a libretto and a CD book, so no one blames him. BM himself thinks that OCH makes his music. But if BM writes something that has little to do with CD music, it is subject to criticism. BM further complains that when someone writes something nice sounding, everyone immediately praises it, whereas in BM's case, good instrumentation is again criticized. He is also criticized for following proper forms and for humor and wit. This makes BM feel like a mischief maker. BM doesn't mind criticism as such, but wants to have the same right as others in our country. He has risked his existence, lives very poorly now on his scholarship and it is possible that his health will pay the price, but he enjoys doing it, he is only driven to make the effort. JH has followed his line somewhat more intimately, so surely he knows he takes things very seriously and how he arrived at his stuff by logical law. A penchant for children's work, light piano stuff, adoration of Mozart, the first ballet THE SHADOW must have come to the joke ballet WHO IS THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL? The ballet is done jokingly, but BM kept a serious point of view in his heart as when he wrote ISTAR or the quartets. So he put some honest and musicianly music in motion again. BM enjoys the judgements of Suk, Ostrchil, Roussel, as well as those of Talich, Stepan, Novak, the Zurich Commission and Stravinsky. These, however, differ greatly from ours. What hurts BM is that he cannot achieve with us what is actually self-evident with everyone. BM writes everything only for others, he has no other plans and his life is very far from the style of "modernity". If he wanted to do these things, he could do what he can do very easily. BM asks towards the end of JH's letter to fill out an application and, if possible, publish the information that the Paris "Comedie" and other papers have written a long article about ISTAR and HALF-TIME. BM writes that wherever he goes he finds a disproportionately better reception than here. In this way he will be forced to leave Prague out of his efforts. At the end of the letter JH thanks and apologises for bothering him. |