The first composition Bohuslav Martinů wrote in Paris (and also his only known work created in 1923) was considered lost for a long time, until the Bohuslav Martinů Institute received a copy of the manuscript in 2005 from the Danish Royal Library in Copenhagen after it had been lying for decades in the unknown location and since 1978 in the archive of the Danish library.
Let us take a look at the story of this interesting piece, which thankfully has a happy end. Martinů arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1923 to study under the French composer Albert Roussel. However, a short-term study stay in Paris turned into 17 years, and Martinů’s life and work are closely associated with the French capital, a city which throughout the 1920s at tracted the best artists in the world, and where a whole number of trends and movements were born and existed side by side. The String Trio No. 1 for violin, viola and cello is the first piece which Martinů composed in Paris. It therefore provides a fascinating opportunity to observe whether Martinů’s arrival in Paris had an immediate affect on his composition style. In a letter of 17 December 1923 Martinů writes to his friend and violinist Stanislav Novak “I have two movements of the Trio and I am beginning on the last. Roussel likes it, though now and then he shakes his head”. The Trio was completed in January 1924 and probably performed in Paris twice that same year. Sadly no reviews of either of these performances were found yet. Sometime at the beginning of 1925, Martinů sent the Trio to Czechoslovakia as documented in other letters from Martinů to Novak. In February 1925 the Trio was premiered in Prague by the Ondřičkovo kvarteto (Ondřiček Quartet) at the 7th music evening held by the Society for Modern Music, after which sources confirming the existence of the work slowly fade. We just do not know where the work went afterwards, or how it came to leave Czechoslovakia. The new history of this composition began only after the discovery of the manuscript, the Trio was performed in a modern premiere on 4 December 2005 by members of the Zemlinsky Quartet as part of the Bohuslav Martinů Days festival in Prague.
Martinů probably did not think too highly of the piece. In a letter to Stanislav Novak in 1925 he writes: “I think I should make some changes; I have decided that the last movement is not very good, as the theme is too exposed”. In another letter he goes into more detail: “As far as the Trio is concerned, I think it is a distracted work, as it was the first thing I did in Paris, when I wasn’t quite settled; that’s still the case today, by the way, but back then I still didn’t have everything straightened out. As far as tone is concerned, I think its sounds good, but I didn’t write it with this intention. It sounds good as it is clear and pure, but otherwise it’s a thoroughly thematic work. But I can hardly stop people from constantly reproaching me for it sounding good. Of course when compared to the bilge they turn out back home, it really does sound good”.
Two Czech press reviews of the performance of the Trio in Prague to some extent confirm Martinů’s fears: “The Trio for violin, viola and cello gives the composer, B. Martinů, as we roughly came to know him from “Half-time”, softer features. The Trio aims to entertain rather than move the listener. It exhibits great musical imagination which shows the western orientation of its creator. The Ondřičkovo kvarteto would be well-advised to play it again” (Listy hudebni matice, 20 February 1925). The review in Hudebni rozhledy (15 February 1925) expressed the following opinions: “The latest music evening held by the Society for Modern Music brought us the very fresh Trio for violin, viola and cello by B. Martinů, who enthusiastically nailed his colours to the mast of modern music at its most extreme (sounding more like Hindemith than Stravinsky). However, he surprises with a richness of creativity and confident composition, but with a few inexplicably inept moments. For instance, the second movement, the highlight of the piece with its bold form and melodic depth, suddenly towards the end completely spoils the impression left by the climax, with long-winded, musically illogical, lacklustre repetition. The third movement is then much weaker than the first two.”
The contradictory and ambiguous opinions of the Czech critics show that the piece belonged to the new, modern style, which Czech critics couldn’t always understand or see as positive, and which showed Parisian influence. The short, three-movement piece is undeniably a direct and original precursor to major chamber works of the second half of the 20th century. Despite the doubts of the critics and the author’s fears, Trio shows great expertise in composition technique (frequent polyphonic passages) and exact knowledge and estimation of the effective use of string instruments (Martinů was himself a violinist). The brisk third move ment based on a distinct rhythm, which we are used to with Martinů, stands in sharp contrast to the first two movements based more on sound and colour.
The fresh sound and rousing tempo of the piece will certainly appeal to many performers who will hopefully include it in their regular chamber repertoire. The first edition of the piece was published by Barenreiter Prague in 2006.
Eva Velická, The Rediscovery of the String Trio No. 1, H 136, in: Lucie Berná (ed.), The Martinů Anthology, International Martinů Circle: Prague 2021, pp. 13–15. [modified]