Martinů’s Subliminal States: A Study of the Composer’s Writings and Reception, with a Translation of His American Diaries by Thomas D. Svatos (review)

Scholars and musicians interested in the life and music of Bohuslav Martinů but lacking fluency in Czech have faced a language barrier when it comes to accessing primary sources on the composer. As cases in point, the two extensive collections of the composer’s original writings—Bohuslav Martinů: Domov, hudba a sv̌et: deníky, zápisníky, úvahy a cˇlánky ([Bohuslav Martinů : Homeland, Music, and the World] Prague: SHV, 1966) and Divadlo Bohuslava Martinů ([Bohuslav Martinů ’s Theater] Prague: Supraphon, 1979), both edited by Czech diplomat and Martinů biographer Miloš Šafránek—still await publication in English translation. Now, thanks to the efforts of Czech music scholar Thomas D. Svatos, a substantial portion of Martinů ’s so-called “American Diaries” (found in Šafránek’s 1966 anthology) have been made available in English for the first time in Martinů’s Subliminal States, Svatos’s recent study examining the composer’s writings and critical reception.

The book is an outgrowth of the author’s PhD dissertation, “Martinů on Music and Culture: A View from His Parisian Criticism and 1940s Notes” (University of California, Santa Barbara, 2001), and Svatos’s work with Martinů ’s writings over the span of two decades affords him unique expertise on this subject. The title of the book reflects the emphasis in Martinů ’s writings on the role of the subconscious in musical creation, an idea the composer explores in depth after settling in America as a European refugee. Martinů happens to use the word subconscious instead of subliminal in those essays where he analyzes his state of mind during the creative process, as he does in this excerpt from his Notebook from New York from December 1945: “And this is the battle: of choosing from those limitless materials what is necessary and what the subconsciously conceived whole demands. It is quite possible that the subconscious is not the best term for this, but for now I have no other” (p. 154).

As reflected in the book’s subtitle, the presentation is divided into two parts. In the first, “A Chronicle of a Composer,” readers will find a chronological overview of the composer’s writings, starting in Paris shortly after Martinů ’s arrival in 1923 with a “burst of essays” published in the Czech cultural press. A selection of these writings is presented synoptically, along with a modicum of original quotes translated from the original Czech, given for illustrative purposes. These quotations elicit a desire to read the originals in full, especially considering that Martinů ’s articles from this seminal period establish his voice as a writer before the public and, as anyone familiar with these articles can attest, are absorbing to read. It is a pity that complete translations of these essays were not included, since it is difficult to convey an accurate sense of nuance and tone from a third-person summary, no matter how well prepared, and we are inevitably left with a strong inclination to examine the horse’s mouth.

The summarizations continue over the course of seventy pages in part 1, with Svatos similarly describing the American-period writings—a brief but essential Autobiography from 1941 and the American Diaries, written between 1943 and 1947. The key difference here is that most of these writings do appear in translation in the second part (“The Composer Speaks”). This advance description, however, which is often quite detailed, has the potential to create an anticlimax when the reader finally arrives at the writings themselves in the second part, having been told what to expect. It’s like being given all the details of a movie plot, including spoilers, before you have a chance to see the film, or...