Writings | Sources database of B. Martinu Institute

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General information

Type of the document	Letter
Sender	Šebánek, Karel
Sender (corporation)
Sender‘s location	Prague
Send date	09.03.1957
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Language	Czech
Acquired	copy from Bohuslav Martinů Centre in Polička, 6/2018
Owner of the source	Centrum Bohuslava Martinů v Poličce
Call number at IBM	Šeb 1957-03-09

Content and physical description

Content	Karel Šebánek tries to push for the publication of Bohuslav Martinů's works in Czechoslovakia, naming the world publishers with whom BM has already published his works. In doing so, Czechoslovakia loses not only the confidence of the composer, but also considerable sums of money when they are forced to buy the works in question from abroad (as with Antonín Dvořák, Josef Suk and Vítězslav Novák). They narrowly missed out on the publication of the very popular VESELOHRY NA MOSTĚ, a piano excerpt of which was being prepared for printing, but the Ministry of Information intervened and stopped the publication. This despite its success in the Italian radio opera competition [Prix Italia], where KS sent it in agreement with Mirko Očadlík. The reason for not publishing the work was allegedly that it was considered formalistic. VESELOHRA NA MOSTĚ was therefore published by Boosey & Hawkes, as were a number of other BM compositions, and performed many times with success. KS criticises the lax approach to publishing works in Czechoslovakia and the neglect of the composer's important anniversaries. However, due to the current interruption of BM's collaboration with Boosey & Hawkes, he points to a possible remedy, whereby Czechoslovakia should take advantage of this situation and contact the composer before signing a contract with another publisher (the Italian publisher [Ricordi] is already interested).
Total number of leaves	2
Number of pages bearing text	2
Fixation	carbon copy of the typescript

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