I wrote a while ago about a wonderful cantata with the improbable name of “The Legend of the Smoke from Potato Tops.” The music (by Bohuslav Martinů) and the text (by Milovan Bureš) are beautiful and fascinating. The music plumbs deep emotion without becoming sentimental; the texts play with the vital human hopes and fears that have always found a voice in folk traditions and connects them with a more modern sort of nature-mysticism. The union of music and text is a wonder and a delight.

The recording on which I met this piece of music (Cantatas, Supraphon SU 4198-2) also contains three other cantatas that Martinů wrote to texts by Bureš, each one engaging in its own way. The second one (actually the first to be written) is called “The Opening of the Springs” and begins with a spring chore—the raking of stones and mud out of the springs to encourage the flow of water—that has also become a spring ritual. The young people of the village go out in a procession, led by a Queen and her maids-of-honor. They sing a song to the spring, and the Queen replies on the spring’s behalf. Another girl, holding an anemone, speaks on behalf of the flowers, and the group takes fresh water back to the village. In conclusion a baritone soloist expresses the thoughts of an older person mourning the loss of this intimacy with nature, remembered from his childhood, expressed in reflective music that is close, at times, to liturgical chant in its simplicity.

The music here is scored for three soloists (soprano, alto, baritone) and female chorus with accompaniment by two violins, viola, and piano. This cantata differs from the other three in making use of a spoken narration as well. For one who doesn’t understand Czech this can seem like an interruption, though I have to credit the narrator, Jaromír Meduna, with a delivery strong and varied enough not to seem simply at odds with the music. It occurred to me, on first hearing, that one of Martinů’s models here might have been Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” with its use of a narrator. That would be the only connection, however. Where Stravinsky’s work is brash, distanced, perhaps cynical, Martinů’s is spare, melodic and generous. Of the two, I think Martinů’s will stand up better for me over time than Stravinsky’s, which is entertaining when performed theatrically, but not all that interesting simply as music.

The third cantata has another odd title: “Romance of the Dandelions.” It isn’t the dandelions that are having the romance, though I suppose they can—with some help from the bees. It has to do with their being early-blooming signs of springtime, love, and hope. The poem centers on a young woman whose beloved has been gone for seven long years as a soldier. She has almost given up hope shen she is surprised by his return. The “plot” of the poem is less complex than the others in this collection, but the poetry is nonetheless captivating. And Martinů has set it in a particularly spare way that matches its more private dimensions. It is scored for “soprano and tenor solo, mixed chorus a cappella, and drumming on a chair.” Simplicity of sound, but no lack of interest for the ear.

The piece begins very quietly with the chorus and soprano soloist singing about images of love, found and lost. The gold of dandelions in bloom suggests the gold of a ring. Then, as the flight of a white dove prefigures the young man’s return, the drumming on the chair suggests his march back home. His lover is tested by the suggestion that he has married another, but she still wishes him no ill—a generous act of love that turns into the true gold of a marriage ring. And the piece ends in the quiet but completely persuasive ecstasy of the two reunited.

The final cantata in the series, completed in the year of Martinů’s death, is “Mikeš of the Mountains,” the tale of how Mikeš and his flock of goats beat their way up to the mountain pastures despite late snows, replacing winter cloud and snow on the slopes with the white of the flock. This isn’t just a tale of one goatherd’s bravado. It suggests that somehow human persistence is necessary to the bringing in of spring. In some sense, Mikeš and his goats make spring happen. The music is for soprano, tenor, mixed chorus, two violins, viola and piano.

The opening chorus sees the goats set free from their winter confinement and embodies their spring exuberance, while the soprano intervenes occasionally to sing of the unity of nature and the wonder of spring. Baritone and tenor soloists express hope for the warming weather and anxiety that it may not last. But the chorus rebounds with still more excitement among the goats. Frost tries to encroach only to find itself forestalled: the meadow is already white with goats! The brief final chorus concludes in the calmly ecstatic vein that Martinů was such a master of.

This set of cantatas is a masterpiece. Any lover of vocal music, I think, will be captivated both by the music and the performance.