My dearest dad,
All the best for your 50th birthday and I wish you another 50 years (that would also fulfil my dearest wish to be together for a long time to come). I want to thank you for everything you have done for me - and the older I get the more I realize you have done a lot. I wish I could also give you something in return so that your "mature years" would be full of happiness and good health. I cherish the memories of us together - from you bathing me as a tiny baby to our "mutual correcting" of each other's works. Well, you would not expect when I was a baby that I would grow up to become your competitor, would you. But she (the competitor) is very open minded and from all the music in the world she likes best - her dad's. Why wouldn't I admire it when it is only Vitalis Kapral1 among the thousands of people, who is not ashamed of his emotions - indeed, who is proud of them.2 So now you only have to take care of your health because there is nothing so dear to me as the two of you there in my dear Morava. I strongly believe that - at the end - everything will lighten up into F-Major and A-Major - the same way my music for your birthday ends.3 I am kissing both your hands and your head and wishing that God gives you all you want and all you wish for.
Your Vitulenka.

1 Here VK playfully changes her father's first name into a masculine form of her own first name
2 VK refers to Kapral's lyrical style
3 VK refers to a few staves of music at the beginning of the letter she composed for this occasion

Letter to father, dated 23.3. 1939. Czech original deposited in: Pamatnik Bohuslava Martinu (The Bohuslav Martinu Memorial) in Policka, Czech Republic. © English translation: Karla Hartl, 2000. We wish to thank the Bohuslav Martinu Memorial for making this correspondence available.

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