Martinů’s Recently Discovered ‘Romance’ Is Published for the First Time

By Mary Nemet | From the March/April 2026 issue of Strings

Fleeing from the German invasion of France, where he was living at the time, Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959) emigrated to the United States in 1941, later teaching at the Mannes College of Music and at Princeton. Abandoning a burgeoning career in Europe, he soon took up writing even more prolifically in a wide array of genres and styles, encouraged by numerous commissions and successful premieres in New York and Boston. Inspired by his countrymen Dvořák and Smetana, along with Bohemian and Moravian folk melodies, Martinů also experimented with neoclassicism and jazz.

He penned six symphonies, works for opera and ballet, and solo and chamber pieces, including an interesting Double Concerto for two string orchestras, piano, and timpani. The Three Madrigals for violin and viola are perhaps his best-known string works, though he also wrote four violin concertos, four cello concertos, cello and piano sonatas, and much more. It is said that he wrote a whole work in his head while taking evening walks.

Martinů’s Romance was recently discovered by the editor of this edition, Natalie Krátká, in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. The manuscript came from the estate of French photographer Boris Lipnitzki, to whom the work is dedicated. His relatives had donated part of his estate, including manuscripts by Honegger, Ibert, Roussel, and Martinů to the National Library of Israel.

This Romance, written in Paris in May 1930, when the composer was 40, exhibits Martinů’s mature style, with its chromaticism, dynamic contrasts, and surprising harmonies. Premiered in London’s Wigmore Hall by Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen in 2023, this rare miniature is published here for the first time.