Jan Dismas Zelenka
The greatest success during his career was the performance of the extensive composition Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis in the presence of the Emperor Charles VI, shortly after his coronation as king of Bohemia in 1723.
Nothing more is known with certainty about Zelenka's early years, except that he received his musical training at the Jesuit college Clementinum in Prague and that his instrument was the violone (bass viol).
He corresponded with many important Italian composers, and amassed a great music library to which Zelenka would later have access, including notably Antonio Lotti's Missa Sapientiae.
[4] Back in Dresden in 1719, he remained there except for an extended stay in Prague in 1722-3, when he 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), at the time of the coronation of Charles VI.
[5] The first work that confirms Zelenka's new status is a Sinfonia (ZWV 190, 18 May 1729, previously known as Capriccio), which, as Janice B. Stockigt has established, was performed at a Gala to celebrate the birthday of the Saxon Elector and Polish king, Augustus II the Strong.
After the "compositeur de la musique italienne" Giovanni Alberto Ristori travelled to Moscow in the end of 1730, Zelenka, as the senior composer at the court, became responsible for supplying secular vocal music for the chamber concerts at the royal palace in Dresden.
It is at this point in time when he began to assemble his fascinating collection of Italian opera and cantata scores, which partly still exists in Dresden and are individually numbered in Zelenka's own hand.
This included a number of arias of Hasse, who arrived in Dresden in July 1731 with his famous wife, Faustina Bordoni-Hasse, the most brilliant female singer of the Baroque era.
After the performances of his opera Cleofide in September 1731, Hasse and Faustina travelled back to Italy, but not before the future arrangements of the Hofkapelle had been decided and later put in motion.
This might have enabled him to purchase 24 opera arias, one duet, eight secular cantatas and two sacred motets in score from Antonio Vivaldi, music he was then able to use both in the chamber and the church.
In that same month, Zelenka was also referred to as the elector's "well-born and virtuoso Kapellmeister" in a letter written by the Superior of the Catholic court church in Dresden.
In addition to composing, Zelenka taught throughout his life a number of prominent musicians of his time, like Johann Joachim Quantz (Frederick the Great of Prussia's longtime court flautist and flute teacher) and J. G. Roellig.
He never married and had no children, and his compositions and musical estate were purchased from his beneficiaries by the Electress of Saxony and the Queen of Poland Maria Josepha of Austria.
He wrote complex fugues, ornate operatic arias, galant-style dances, baroque recitatives, Palestrina-like chorales, and virtuosic concertos.
Nevertheless, Zelenka's language is idiosyncratic in its unexpected harmonic twists, obsession with chromatic harmonies, large usage of syncopated and tuplet figures, and unusually long phrases full of varied musical ideas.
Furthermore, from his unorthodox, disjointed, and "bizarre" sounding fugal subjects (such as the Kyrie Eleison from ZWV 48) to his fiery orchestration, he presents fresh interpretations of established liturgical mass texts Despite his posthumous neglect, Zelenka was highly regarded during his own career and was respected by significant composers of the day, such as Telemann, Bach (as aforementioned), and Graupner.
[11] Between the years 1716 and 1719, Zelenka studied under the guidance J.J. Fux (1660-1741), the author of Gradus ad Parnassum in Vienna and accepted J.J. Quantz (1697-1773) as one of his students.
The rediscovery of Jan Dismas Zelenka's work is attributed to Bedřich Smetana, who rewrote some scores from the archives in Dresden and introduced one of the composer's orchestral suites in Prague's New Town Theatre festivals in 1863.
They were three trio sonatas in 1958–60, Sinfonia concertante in 1963 and the exquisite interpretation of "Lamentationes Jeremiae prophetae" with the soloists Karl Berman, Nedda Casei and Theo Altmeyer in 1969.
In honor of Jan Dismas Zelenka, in 1984 the Autumn Music Festival under Blaník [cs] was founded and commemorated with the memorial plaque on his house.
Several analyses of the composer's sacred and instrumental compositions (particularly fugues and other counterpoint)[11] have contributed to his popularity, due to the efforts of both musicologists and organizations dedicated to the dissemination of his work.
According to Susanne Oschmann, "Jan Dismas Zelenka has of late been recognized as one of the most original composers of a musical epoch that was long thought to have been shaped by Bach and Handel",[15] and according to Heinz Holliger, "It seems essential to me, that Zelenka (like Bach) obviously has absorbed the total compositional knowledge of the previous generations, and, by virtue of his most individual personality exposes it to a breaking test, thus setting free a critical element opposing the tradition.
The sacred vocal-instrumental music is at the center of his compositions and include over 20 masses, four extensive oratorios and requiems, two Magnificats and Te Deum settings, 13 litanies, many psalms, hymns, and antiphons.
Zelenka also wrote a number of purely instrumental works – six trio or quartet sonatas, five capricci, one "Hipocondrie" and other concertos, overtures and symphonies.
