Born October 16 in the past 1679 – Jan Dismas Zelenka, Czech composer (d. 1745) Jan Dismas Zelenka (baptised Jan Lukáš Zelenka; 16 October 1679 – 23 December 1745), previously also known as Johann Dismas Zelenka, was an important Czech baroque composer. His music is admired for its harmonic inventiveness and counterpoint. Zelenka was born in Louňovice pod Blaníkem (German: Launiowitz), a small market town southeast of Prague, in Bohemia. He was the eldest of the eight children born to Marie Magdalena (née Hájek) and Jiří Zelenka. The middle name Dismas is probably his confirmation name. Zelenkas father was a schoolmaster and organist in Launiowitz; nothing more is known with certainty about Zelenkas early years. He received his musical training at the Jesuit college Clementinum in Prague. His instrument was the violone (or bass viol). His first works, all oratorios, were written in his Prague student days. Zelenka served Baron von Hartig in Prague, before his appointment as violone player in Dresdens royal orchestra around 1710. This Baron von Hartig might be identical with Freiherr von Hartig, the first patron and director of the Prague Musical Academy, most probably identical with the imperial governor resident Freiherr Ludwig Joseph von Hartig (1685-1736) a well-known connoisseur and collector of music. Possibly on Count Hartigs recommendation, Zelenka was accepted to the Dresden Hofkapelle (court orchestra) as a double bass player with a salary of 300 thalers. Zelenka arrived in Dresden in either 1710 or 1711 and the favourable conditions for music making at Dresden gave added impetus to his creativity, particularly with respect to the composition of sacred music for the Catholic court church. His first opus in Dresden was a Mass, the Missa Sanctae Caeciliae (c. 1711). His emigration from Bohemia, for unknown reasons, was most likely sudden.[citation needed] Some monographs give various personal reasons why he left, but the truth is still unknown. Zelenka continued his education in Vienna under the Habsburg Imperial Kapellmeister Johann Joseph Fux beginning in 1716; he was back in Dresden by 1719. Whether or not he ever went to Venice is unclear, but a Saxon court document of 1715 records a royal cash advance for such a journey to Zelenka along with fellow composers Christian Petzold and Johann Georg Pisendel. Except for a trip back to Prague in 1723, where Zelenka conducted the première of one of his major secular works, Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis conspicua orbi regia Bohemiae Corona, a melodrama about St. Wenceslas on the occasion of the coronation of Charles VI, he remained in Dresden. While in Prague he concentrated on instrumental composition, as the autograph of the score of Concerto à 8 concertanti confirms: Six concerti written in a hurry in Prague in 1723. Back in Dresden, he started as assistant to Kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen but gradually took over Heinichens responsibilities as the latters health declined. After Heinichen died in 1729, Zelenka applied for the now-vacant post of Kapellmeister but it was given instead (in 1733) to the eminent opera composer Johann Adolf Hasse, reflecting the courts fashionable interest in opera as opposed to the liturgical music that was Zelenkas forte. Instead, in 1735, Zelenka was given the title of church composer – Compositeur of the Royal Court Capelle which none other than (Johann Sebastian Bach himself had applied for in 1733 and did in fact receive it in 1736, replacing Zelenka, who was again disappointed by the courts decision; but despite this he continued to compose assiduously. Such social failures might have turned him inward to exercise his free creative spirit and produce innovative work with unique qualities. J.S. Bach held Zelenka in high esteem, as evidenced by a letter of 13 January 1775 from his great son C.P.E. Bach to Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel. Zelenka was actually a guest in Bachs Leipzig home at one point. Bach thought enough of Zelenka to have some of his works copied; e.g. he had his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, copy out the Amen from Zelenkas third Magnificat (ZWV 108) for use in Leipzigs St. Thomass church where J.S. Bach was cantor for the last 2 1/2 decades of his life. In addition to composing, Zelenka taught throughout his life, instructing a number of prominent musicians of that time, e.g. Johann Joachim Quantz (Frederick the Great of Prussias longtime court flautist and flute teacher), J. G. Barter and J. G. Roellig. His close friends included eminent composers Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Georg Pisendel and Sylvius Leopold Weiss. Zelenka died of dropsy in Dresden on December 23, 1745, and was buried on Christmas Eve. His last works were never performed in his lifetime. He never married and had no children; his compositions and musical estate were purchased from his beneficiaries by Electress of Saxony Maria Josepha of Austria, and after his death were closely guarded (in contrast to their lack of appreciation when he was alive) and considered valuable court possessions. Telemann, with Pisendels assistance, tried unsuccessfully to publish Zelenkas Responsoria. He wrote on 17 April 1756, with undisguised contempt for publishers disinterest in the work, that the complete manuscript will be at the Dresden court, kept under lock and key as something very rare....
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 10:31:21 +0000
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