Westbooks - Title Details

Martinu's Letters Home Five Decades of Correspondence with Family and Friends

Martinu, Bohuslav more...

Format: Hardback
Library Classification: Adult Non Fiction
BIC Subjects: Composers & musicians; Essays, journals, letters & other prose works; Biography & autobiography: historical, political & military
Publisher: Toccata Press
Imprint: Toccata Press
Publication Date: 1/10/2009
Place of Publication: United Kingdom

RRP: $105.95
Available by Order

Synopsis

Information

The 121 letters collected in this book document Martinu's life in his own words, beginning as a student in Prague and Paris, following his flight from Nazi-occupied France and charting his triumphs in American exile; the last letter is dated shortly before his death in 1959. They are addressed to his family and friends back home in the village of Policka, on the Czech-Moravian border. Kept at a distance by the Nazi occupation and then by Communism, Martinu was never to return there but, in a letter to the mayor, written as a gesture of solidarity after August 1938, he proudly described himself as a 'native son who is far from his home but who constantly returns - if only in his thoughts - with gladness - to that dear land - the most beautiful on earth.'