Jan Dismas Zelenka

Biografi

Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745) was the son of a local choirmaster and organist in the small Bohemian town of Lounovice, southeast of Prague. He probably received his musical education at one of the Jesuit colleges in Prague, the Collegium Clementinum. After a first post with the Imperial governor Baron von Hartig in Prague, who was familiar with the latest Italian taste in music, Zelenka was in 1710 or 1711, during the regency of August the Strong, able to find employ at one of the most important and magnificent of all European courts, that of the King of Poland and Elector of Saxony in Dresden. Zelenka remained a member of the famous Dresden court orchestra, initially as a double-bass player, until his death in 1745. After a lengthy period spent in Vienna in the years from 1716 to 1719 to study with the great master of counterpoint and composer to the Imperial court Johann Joseph Fux, he was also endowed with the office of composer of church music in Dresden. Along with his superiors, the Court Kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen (d. 1729) and Johann Adolf Hasse, he composed for the Court “chamber” (his six Trio Sonatas ZWV 181 are important) and for the Catholic Court Church.

From the beginning he established himself as an ambitious composer, with a Missa Sanctae Caeciliae (ZWV 1, 1710, revised in 1712 and later) dedicated to the elector. His regular composition of church music first began when figural music was performed in the Dresden court church with the participation of the court ensemble, at Whitsun, 1721. Thus his church works date largely from the years 1722-29, when he supported and deputized for the court Kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen, who was often ill, with the composition and performance of masses, music for requiem and the Office of the Dead, compositions for Holy Week (including lamentations and a large-scale cycle of the 27 responsories), psalms, magnificat and hymns for vespers, Marian antiphons for compline, Te Deum, litanies, etc. In 1735 Zelenka was named “Kirchen-Compositeur”, yet in later years, his services as a composer seem to have been in little or no demand; he was evidently in poor health from 1733 onwards. Even if the years 1734–44 were less productive in quantity, they led to a high point in church music of its day in terms of the artistic demands of the works.

Thomas Kohlhase