Remarkable among the ten choral cycles for various ensembles is the cycle for mixed choirs [larger ensemble], Four Songs about Mary (Čtyři písně o Marii, H 235). The forty-three-year-old composer completed it in Paris on 17 January 1934, although he probably began work in Polička at Christmas 1933. Like his first choral cycle Czech Nursery Rhymes (Česká říkadla, H 209), for female choir, this cycle is set to folk song texts, but this time Moravian. Martinů chose them from František Sušil's monumental collection „Moravské národní písně s nápěvy do textu vřaděnými“.
This choral work was probably provoked by Bohuslav Martinů's friend and former colleague from the Czech Philharmonic, Karel Šejna, who was also the conductor of the Vinohrady Hlahol choir in the 1930s. The premiere on 12 April 1935 in Prague, conducted by Šejna, was a great success.
After Four Songs about Mary, Martinů completed his fourth opera, The Plays of Mary (Hry o Marii, H 236), which have a certain connection to the mentioned choral cycle. The third act of this opera, entitled “The Nativity” (completed in Paris on 1 April 1934), contains a vocal passage in which Martinů set to music (though for a different cast [this time solo]) the same text as in the first part of that cycle, the Annunciation. Martinů also set the text of the second part of the cycle, 'The Dream', once more, in New York in 1943 in the cycle Songs for One Page (Písničky na jednu stránku, H 294) as “The Dream of Virgin Mary” (No 6). Finally, a variant of the text of the third part of the choral cycle, “Our Lady's Breakfast"', was set by Bohuslav Martinů nine years later in New York for the first of the Three Sacred Songs (Three Legends), H 339, (“The Birth of our Lord”). Only the text of the fourth part of the choral cycle [“The Virgin Mary's Picture", depicting the legend of the Marian picture in Czestochowa] did not return to Martinů – probably owing to its length.
Zdeněk Zouhar. Bohuslav Martinů: Čtyři písně o Marii (preface), Prague: Tempo, 1993.