Life and career
Frederick Herman Martens trained as a pianist in New York and studied music theory with Max Spicker. As the New York correspondent for a London music journal, he wrote for listeners who might never hear the performances he described. He also worked directly with composers, writing words for cantatas and operettas and adapting foreign-language scores for singers who performed in English.
In 1914 he became a charter member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. He served on its board from 1924 until his death in 1932. His association with the composer Leo Ornstein produced both a book about Ornstein’s life and music and a prize-winning anthem on which musician and writer worked together.
Work and ideas
Martens’s books on performers often took the form of conversations. For Violin Mastery he asked working violinists and teachers how they practised, taught and approached particular problems. The differences between their answers are part of the interest of the book. His English translation of Carl Flesch’s Art of Violin Playing gave him the related task of rendering one teacher’s technical vocabulary with precision.
Outside music he translated Richard Wilhelm’s German collection of Chinese tales. The English title page of The Chinese Fairy Book names Wilhelm as editor, Martens as translator and George W. Hood as illustrator. Its route from Chinese storytelling through German into English helps explain why the book appears under several names in the library.
