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11 - Reconstructing a Better Version of The Greek Passion
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- By Aleš Březina, Bohuslav Martinů Institute in Prague
- Edited by Nigel Simeone, John Tyrrell
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- Book:
- Charles Mackerras
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 May 2015
- Print publication:
- 16 April 2015, pp 165-168
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Summary
Next to Dvořák and Janáček among Charles Mackerras's great passions for Czech music was Bohuslav Martinů. Knowledge of this fact gave me the courage in March 1995 to visit Sir Charles in the hotel Radisson Blu in Basle and present him with a copy of my recently published catalogue of the Martinů autographs in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basle. Astonishingly, he received me, though he didn't know me from Adam (and furthermore I had unwittingly awoken him from his afternoon rest before the concert). In the catalogue he was immediately taken by the fact that it contained several unknown sections of Martinů's The Greek Passion, from the discarded first version of this opera. Three months later he wrote to me:
I have been asked to conduct a performance of The Greek Passion in a production by the young Australian director Baz Luhrman. The production will first be shown at the Bregenz Festival, then at the Edinburgh Festival, and finally at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. As we discussed at the time, there are many faults in the dramaturgy of this opera and we are all keen to try and construct a version of the opera which will improve the dramatic flow. From what I understood from you at our meeting, you have found certain passages of music which Martinů discarded for one reason or another, and in the course of your researches you have also discovered several sheets of Martinů's autograph which might be of use to us in the reconstructing of a better version of The Greek Passion. Both Dr Alfred Wopmann of the Bregenz Festival and Mr Nicholas Payne of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden will shortly be in touch with you to see if you could possibly help us in this respect. […] I look forward to hearing from you as to whether you would be willing to co-operate with us in what looks like being an extremely interesting venture.
Soon afterwards Dr Alfred Wopmann did indeed visit me in Basle, and at his request I began looking for the many tens of missing pages from the first version of The Greek Passion.
2 - The Cut in the Third Movement of the Second Symphony
- Michael Crump
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- Book:
- Martinu and the Symphony
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 May 2024
- Print publication:
- 23 April 2010, pp 476-483
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Summary
In his notes on the sources of the Second Symphony, Halbreich records a discrepancy between the two facsimile copies available to him in the early 1960s. One, the property of Charlotte Martinů , contained 56 extra bars in the Scherzo which had been removed from the copy deposited with the publisher, Boosey and Hawkes. Since that time, Madame Martinů’s copy has vanished, nor is there any trace of the autograph. A third copy has since been found in the Library of Congress, but its number of pages matches that of the publisher’s copy. Martinů’s full orchestration of the passage is therefore lost, at least for the time being. Fortunately, the content of these bars can still be inspected on pages 19 and 20 of the sketch, which are reproduced in facsimile overleaf. Towards the middle of the second stave, a38 time-signature can be seen, written in large numbers. This metre remains in force for the duration of the cut, which ends on the second page, on the eleventh stave from the bottom and four bars in from the right-hand margin.
If the cut bars were to be restored to the Symphony, they would be inserted two bars before figure 12, where in the final version a dramatic change in character comes over the movement. The reconstruction of the missing material is not a straightforward task. The sketch was clearly written at speed and uses a number of shorthand devices which were perfectly suitable for Martinů’s purpose but hamper later attempts to read it. Ex. 196 gives an indication of how his condensed notation works in the sketch. It represents, in unedited form, the four bars which immediately precede the cut (six bars before figure 12 in the score, allowing readers with scores to see the gulf between sketch and finished product for themselves
It can be seen at once from Ex. 196 that Martinů rarely uses clefs – indeed, comparison of these bars with the score shows that he can change from one clef to another on a single line, without indicating either. The third stave, for instance, begins with a chord of G minor and therefore starts in bass clef. After a separation mark, Martinů continues with the figuration to be found in the harp: this material has to be read in treble clef.