Martinů wrote the Field Mass – dedicated to “Czechoslovak volunteers on the French front line” – in Paris during the “Phoney War” period of the Second World War. According to indirect but reliable testimony from the composer's closest circle, he dedicated the composition to "Czechoslovak volunteers on the French frontline". The work was motivated by national feeling and his anxiety about the situation at home. According to Jiří Mucha, one day in the Autumn of 1939 Martinů announced decisively that he wanted to write “something for our soldiers, that could be performed in a field setting”. He started to work on the composition during September 1939. He then immediately asked Mucha to write him a text for this Field Mass. In the next few days, Mucha wrote a draft version of the text. His basic approach was to create verses in the form of “modern psalms in which a soldier – who might be anyone of us – confides his anxiety and nostalgic longing”. In a letter, that Martinů wrote to his biographer-friend Miloš Šafránek, he gives more information about the instrumentation of the Mass (“small male-voice choir, 2 piccolos, 2 clarinets, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, harmonium, piano and percussion instruments”), the duration (“perhaps half an hour”) and the texts, which he writes are “in accord with current times”. Finally, in a letter to Šafránek dated 5 November he announces that he has finished the Mass and made a copy.
Martinů appears to have revised the Field Mass within six weeks of finishing it. The revised version of the Mass contains a new ending, which entirely transforms the work’s character. The first version concludes by quoting the fourteenth-century Czech hymn “Jezu Kriste štědrý kněže” (O Lord Jesu, bountiful priest); this is replaced in the later version by settings of passages from Psalms 57, 56 and 54. In a letter from Martinů to Šafránek dated 3 June 1940, just eleven days before the Germans entered Paris, Martinů writes that he has to flee and essentially leave everything behind, but in order to preserve the manuscripts he will hide them with friends and will so send Šafránek the scores of the Field Mass and the Double Concerto for safe-keeping. The Mass remained unheard in public during the War years. The premiere was given in Prague on 28 February 1946 by the Czech Filharmonic and Czechoslovak Radio Chorus under Rafael Kubelík. The US premiere took place on 1 May 1949 in the Princeton University Chapel at a memorial concert for the philanthropist Elizabeth Milbank Anderson (1850-1921). Carl Weinrich conducted the Princeton University Chapel Choir, the Bryn Mawr College Choir and the New York Brass Ensemble; an illustrious participant on the piano was recent Princeton graduate Charles Rosen.
Paul Wingfield, The Bohuslav Martinů Complete Edition: Field Mass, H 279, The Spectre’s Bride, H 214 I A, series VI/2/2, Prague: Bärenreiter, 2019.