JAN DISMAS ZELENKA

'Jan Dismas Zelenka', also known as
'Johann Dismas Zelenka', (October 16, 1679 - December 23, 1745) was a Czech Baroque composer whose music was notably adventurous with great harmonic invention and mastery
of counterpoint.
Zelenka played the violone, the largest and lowest member of the viol family, analogous to the double-bass in the violin family of stringed instruments.
Zelenka was born in Louňovice pod Blaníkem, a small market town southeast of Prague in what was then Bohemia. His father was a schoolmaster and organist there. Nothing more is known with certainty about Zelenka's early years. He probably received musical training in the center of Prague at a Jesuit college named the Clementinum.
It is known that Zelenka served Baron Hartig, the imperial governor resident in Prague before becoming a violone player in the royal orchestra at Dresden in about 1710. He studied counterpoint in Vienna under Fux from 1715 and was back in Dresden by 1719. Except for a visit in 1723 to Prague to take part in the performance of Fux's opera "Constanza e Fortezza", he remained a resident of Dresden until his death. Whether or not he ever went to Venice is unclear, but there is some indirect documentary evidence to that effect from the Vienna years.
In Dresden, Zelenka initially assisted the ''Kapellmeister'', Johann David Heinichen, and gradually assumed Heinichen's duties as his health declined. After Heinichen died in 1729, Zelenka applied for the prestigious post of ''Kapellmeister''. The post went, instead, to Johann Adolf Hasse. In 1735 Zelenka was given the title of church music composer. He was in good company, as J.S. Bach had also applied for this title and shared it with Zelenka. Zelenka died in Dresden in 1745, having written works in his final years that were never performed during his lifetime - and some of which have been claimed by the current Zelenka musicologist Kohlhase to have "visionary power".
As might be expected, most of Zelenka's compositions were sacred works. They included three oratorios, 12 masses, and numerous other pieces of sacred music. Zelenka's orchestral and vocal pieces are often virtuosic and demanding. In particular, his writing for bass instruments is far more demanding than that of other composers of his era and the "utopian" (as Heinz Holliger describes them) requirements on the oboe playing in his trio sonatas are also notable.
One of J.S. Bach's sons later recalled that: "No master of music was apt to pass through this place (Leipzig) without making my father's acquaintance and letting himself be heard by him." As Christoph Wolff noted in his brilliant biography of ''Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician'', "Guests (of J.S. Bach) included some of the leading figures in contemporary German musical life, among them ... Jan Dismas Zelenka...."

Contents

Selected list of works

External links

Selected list of works

★ Six trio sonatas (nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 are written for two oboes, bassoon and basso continuo, while in the third a violin replaces the second oboe; all designated ZWV 181) and eleven other instrumental works (includes ZWV 182 - ZWV 190)

★ Twenty-three masses (designated ZWV 1 - ZWV 21), some missing, and a number of mass movements. Missa Sanctissimae Trinitatis, Missa Votiva, Missa Dei Patris, Missa Dei Filii, and Missa Omnium Sanctorum (designated ZWV 17 - ZWV 21) rank amongst Zelenka's finest works

★ Four requiem settings

★ Fifty-three psalm settings, some missing

★ Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis - Melodrama de St. Wenceslao

★ I Penitentai al Sepolero del Redentore - Oratorio

★ Die Responsorien zum Karfreitag

★ Il serpente di bronzo - Oratorio

External links

★ A simplified version of Wolfgang Reiche's catalog of Zelenka's works

★ The "Discover Zelenka" website

★ The Zelenka Forum

★

★ Hear Sonatas for 2 oboes