Program Seven • Faith and Folklore

The Festival’s second all-Martinů event opens with one of the composer’s greatest choral works. A Czech-language cantata written to honor the Czech volunteers who fought in the French army, Martinů’s Field Mass had him blacklisted by the Nazis. Set to texts by Jiří Mucha, passages from Bohemian folk poetry, and lines from psalms and the liturgy, this powerful anti-war protest anticipates such later works as Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and Leon...