The 1930s brought a more settled period in Martinů’s life, both personally and artistically. The biggest change to his circumstances came in 1931 with his marriage to Charlotte Quennehen, to whom he had introduced himself in 1926. Charlotte Martinů had lived a very different life from her husband. She was a seamstress with only a limited knowledge of music. For many years her industry sustained the couple through times of privation, gaining him the freedom to compose; later, in her widowhood, she was a tireless promoter of his music.

Two vital new influences emerged at this time which strengthened and deepened his musical personality. The first was a new interest and admiration for the Baroque concerto tradition, in particular the works of Corelli and Vivaldi. Martinů usually referred to the concerto grosso as the source of his inspiration. Strictly speaking, this term does not apply to solo concerti, but to those where a small group of instrumentalists (the concertino) is opposed by a larger orchestral body (the ripieno). Many of his works of the 1930s are of precisely this type, including the Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra (H207) from 1931 or the Concerto for Flute, Violin and Orchestra (H252) written five years later. The ‘neo-Baroque’ style was expressed not only by the alternation of competing forces but in the detail of the instrumental writing. The thematic and polyphonic aspects of the music concentrate heavily on tiny particles from which long contrapuntal lines can be generated. Such techniques frequently inform Martinů’s chamber writing too: indeed, Halbreich cites the First Piano Trio (H193, also known as Cinq pièces brèves) completed in May 1930, as the first instance of this style of writing, and reports Martinů’s own awareness that with this work he had written something ‘entirely new’. As has been seen, Le Départ had gone some way to making this innovation possible.

The second influence on Martinů at the start of the 1930s was the reawakening of his interest in Moravian folk-song, which had remained dormant since his time in Polička.