The Stowe Pastorals, H 335 were composed by Martinů in New York in November 1951, and they were dedicated to The Trapp Family. Their unusual instrumentation was clearly derived from the options and instruments of the dedicatees, whose acquaintance Martinů had made in Boston a few years earlier. According to Frank Rybka, Martinů was fascinated by the ensemble at their first meeting, and he immediately decided to compose a vocal work for them. However, the Stowe Pastorals were not commissioned by the von Trapps; Martinů composed them as a reminiscence of Stowe (Vermont), where he stayed in the summer of 1951. At the time he did not meet anyone from the family itself, he was only in touch with their friend Franz Wasner, who surprisingly did not really hold a favourable opinion of the composer’s intention and who thus mostly discussed the matter of the style characteristic for the Trapp Family (that is, the interpretation of folk and classical music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). After returning to New York Martinů created the nonet Stowe Pastorals from 5 to 25 November; contrary to his original plans, the work is purely instrumental. In a letter to his Swiss friend and benefactor Paul Sacher, the composer remarked that he had written it for an unspecified festival in Basel. The premiere of the Stowe Pastorals was aired on 7 May 1952 on Radio Basel as part of the celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the local branch of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). Martinů, who was living in the USA, was not in attendance. However, he listened to the concert seven years later from a recording (REC), which his friend and director of the Basel radio station Conrad Beck brought to him to Schönenberg in 1959. The concert garnered several reviews in the period press, with several of them commending the work. In the spring of 1959, Bärenreiter began preparing an edition of the work. For this reason, Martinů sought the performance material from the premiere of the piece, mainly the recorder parts, which might have included corrections and alterations with a significant impact on the final version of the work. Unfortunately, he was not able to find the material. During the preparations the publishing house opened up the question of the composition’s definitive title, it considered the reference to the little-known town of Stowe to be confusing. Martinů agreed, and the work was published in 1960 under the more concise name Pastorals. The current edition returns to the complete original title of Stowe Pastorals, which refers both to the place that inspired the composer to create the piece and to its dedicatees.
Jitka Zichová, Bohuslav Martinů Complete Edition IV/4/I, © 2015 Editio Bärenreiter Praha