The Norwegian composer Ludvig Irgens-Jensen (1894-1969) was one of the towering creative figures of his native land, although his dignified and powerful music does not receive the attention its quality deserves, either at home or abroad. The success of his dramatic symphony Heimferd (‘Homecoming’) in 1930 brought him national fame, but the post-War triumph of modernism, coupled with his personal modesty, pushed Irgens-Jensen's tonal music into the shadows: its contrapuntally based textures and its modally tinged harmonies were seen as things of the past. But a growing number of recordings is reminding listeners that he was one of the most distinguished and distinctive voices in twentieth-century music – a figure of international importance, writing music of striking nobility and strength of purpose with some meltingly lovely melodic lines.

Arvid O. Vollsnes' Ludvig Irgens-Jensen: The Life and Music of a Norwegian Composer is the first discussion in English of this profoundly decent man and his life-enhancing music. A review of the original Norwegian publication of this book in Aftenposten, the main Norwegian daily paper, described it as ‘a gripping biographical portrait. As well as Irgens-Jensen's life we get a broad picture of Norwegian musical life from the 1920s to his death in 1969’.

A CD of extracts from Irgens-Jensen's works has been prepared to accompany the English edition to provide readers with an introduction to his highly individual and immediately appealing sound-world.

The 121 letters collected here document Martinů’s life in his own words, beginning as a student in Prague and Paris, following his flight from Nazi-occupied France and charting his triumphs in American exile; the last letter is dated shortly before his death in 1959. They are addressed to his family and friends back home in the village of Polička, on the Czech-Moravian borders south-east of Prague. Kept at a distance by the German occupation and then by Communism, Martinů was never to return to Polička but, in a letter to the mayor, written as an gesture of solidarity after August 1938, he proudly described himself as ‘its native son who is far from his home but who constantly returns – if only in his thoughts – with gladness – to that dear land – the most beautiful on earth’.

The letters provided a detailed commentary on Martinů’s life and music, his contacts with some of the leading musicians of the day, his dices with death (narrowly escaping the Nazis and surviving a dangerous accident), his interaction with leading writers, and his concern with the practicalities of a composer’s life – not least, the location of his scores and performing material and the payment of his royalties – made much more complicated by his life in exile and the precarious position of his music with the Communist authorities after the Second World War. The individual who emerges from these pages is a simple man, in the best sense of the word, more concerned with the well-being of others than himself and accepting both adversity and triumph with remarkable calmness of mind. And an unusual appendix – the first-ever publication of a sequence of Martinů cartoons – reveals an impish sense of wit.