- There have been many discussions about Martinu's personality, manners and possible Asperger syndrome. Frank James Rybka promoted the idea that Martinu suffered from this kind of autism spectrum disorder.
- Martinu returned to live in Europe for two years starting in 1953, then was back in New York until returning to Europe in May 1956.
- One of Martinu's lesser known works features the theremin. Martinu started working on his Fantasia for theremin, oboe, string quartet and piano in the summer of 1944, and finished it on October 1. He dedicated it to Lucie Bigelow Rosen, who had commissioned it and was the theremin soloist at its premiere at New York's Town Hall on 3 November 1945, joined by the Koutzen Quartet, Robert Bloom (oboe), and Carlos Salzedo (piano).
- A characteristic feature of his orchestral writing is the near-omnipresent piano; many of his orchestral works include a prominent part for piano, including his small Concerto for harpsichord and chamber orchestra.
- His opera The Greek Passion is based on the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis, and his orchestral work Memorial to Lidice (Památník Lidicím) was written in remembrance of the village of Lidice that was destroyed by the Nazis in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in the late spring of 1942. It was completed in August 1943 whilst he was in New York, and premiered there in October of that year.
- The bulk of his writing from the 1930s into the 1950s was in a neoclassical vein, but with his last works he opened up his style to include more rhapsodic gestures and a looser, more spontaneous sense of form. This is easiest to hear by comparing his Fantaisies symphoniques (Symphony No. 6), H 343, with its five predecessors, all from the 1940s.
- He was a Czech composer of modern classical music.
- He was prolific, quickly composing chamber, orchestral, choral and instrumental works. His Concerto Grosso and the Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani are among his best-known works from this period.
- His symphonic career began when he emigrated to the United States in 1941, fleeing the German invasion of France.
- Martinu was a prolific composer who wrote almost 400 pieces.
- In the early 1930s he found his main fount for compositional style: neoclassicism, creating textures far denser than those found in composers treating Stravinsky as a model.
- After leaving Czechoslovakia in 1923 for Paris, Martinu deliberately withdrew from the Romantic style in which he had been trained. During the 1920s he experimented with modern French stylistic developments, exemplified by his orchestral works Half-time and La Bagarre.
- Many of his works are regularly performed or recorded, among them his oratorio The Epic of Gilgamesh (1955, Epos o Gilgamesovi), his six symphonies, concertos (these number almost thirty - four violin concertos, eight compositions for solo piano, four cello concertos, one of each for harpsichord, viola, and oboe, five double concertos, two triple concertos, and two concertos for four solo instruments and orchestra), an anti-war opera Comedy on the Bridge (Veselohra na moste), chamber music (including eight string quartets, three piano quintets, a piano quartet), a flute sonata, a clarinet sonatina and many others.
- He became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and briefly studied under Czech composer and violinist Josef Suk.
- Among his operas, Juliette and The Greek Passion are considered the finest.
- The setting of Martinu's birth was unusual. He was born in the tower of the St. Jakub Church in Policka, a town in Bohemia, close to the Moravian border.
- He has been compared to Prokofiev and Bartók in his innovative incorporation of Czech folk elements into his music. He continued using Bohemian and Moravian folk melodies throughout his oeuvre, for instance in The Opening of the Springs (Otvírání studánek)i.
- Martinu's notable students include Burt Bacharach, Alan Hovhaness, Vítezslava Kaprálová, Louis Lane, Jan Novák, H. Owen Reed, Howard Shanet and Chou Wen-chung.
- He wrote 6 symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works.
- He also adopted jazz idioms, for instance in his Kitchen Revue (Kuchynská revue).
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