The composer is writing because his name has been omitted from a New York Times announcement about the Berkshire Festival. He requests the recipient do him the favor of writing to Times critic Olin Downes for a correction.

Martinu was a remarkable and prolific Czech composer who spent most of his life away from his homeland but remained emotionally and musically attached to his native country. After moving to Paris in the 1930s, he fled the German invasion in 1940 and finally settled in New York City in 1941.

The letter is written to Howard Shanet, a student of Martinu (Shanet also studied under Stiedry, Koussevitzky, and Honegger), and a Columbia University-based conductor and writer on music. He was noted especially for his support of new music as well as neglected works of the past. He wrote the definitive book on the history of the New York Philharmonic, Philharmonic: A History of New York's Orchestra (1975).