Composer / Author: Martinu, Bohuslav
Title: Marionetten III
kleine Stücke für Klavier
Detailed instrumentation: Piano

(The way the pieces are numbered,which the composer verifiably accepted, however, does not correspond to their actual chronological order - they were, in fact, written in reverse order, so that Puppets III came first, while Puppets I is the latest in the series.) All three books of Puppets, which emerged between the years 1912 and 1925 and, despite their title, differ from one another intheir aesthetic approaches and progressive maturity, are published by Editio Bärenreiter innew, revised urtext editions edited by Ales Brezina. This urtext edition with its relatively comprehensive preface describing the circumstances surrounding the advent of the work, is supported by the latest research and an assessment of all known and accessible sources,which the editor presents and clarifies in detail in his critical commentary to the second and third books of Puppets. Thus Puppet Ball (No. 4) is also published in the third bookin twoseparate versions - in a newer version based on the first edition, on which Martinu very probably collaborated and which introduces, apart from other changes, entirely newmusic as well in the middle part, and in an earlier version based on the autograph.Thanks to its witty musical ideas and the composer's empathy for children and their intellectual world, Puppets has, since its first edition, always been highly popular among performers.