The musical works of Tobias Zeutschner (1621-75), as documented in occasional school prints. Working on a thematic catalogue of the Breslau [Wroclaw] Organist (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
The musical works of Tobias Zeutschner (1621-75), as documented in occasional school prints. Working on a thematic catalogue of the Breslau [Wrocław] 1 Organist ABSTRACT: Tobias Zeutschner (b. 1621, d. 1675), organist of St Mary Magdalene's in Breslau, was not a teacher at the Magdalenaeum gymnasium school affi liated to that church. However, occasional prints preserved in the Silesian-Lusatian Collection of Wrocław University Library confi rm his active participation in the musical life of that school. Until now, the scenarios of plays performed by the Magdalenaeum's pupils have never been the object of musicologists' interest. And yet they allow us to add several previously unknown, albeit not extant, items to Zeutschner's oeuvre. Consequently, the thematic catalogue of compositions by Tobias Zeutschner (prepared by the author) contains 83 items, as compared to the 47 listed by Reinhold Starke in 1900. At least ten of the new titles were noted in the school's occasional prints. What is more, the Magdalenaeum pamphlets offer additional information about known compositions that is particularly helpful in establishing their chronology. For example, previously we had only an approximate date for the Christmas biblical history 'Halleluja, höret an die Geburt unsers Herren', a major work by Zeutschner, whereas now it is possible to propose 29 January 1660 as the date of its fi rst rendition.
Works from the music collection of the Moravian Society, Christiansfeld
The Moravian music collection in Christiansfeld is one of the largest privately owned, Danish collections including works dating back to the foundation of the town in 1773. At the end of the eighteenth century Christiansfeld, which the Moravian community built within very few years, was a place where music both in church and outside the auspices of the church was of a high standard in terms of both the quality of the music as well and the performances. Many flocked to the town, not only to shop but also to attend concerts, church services with hymn-singing and anthems and to be given a tour around the town by a tourist guide. Danish Centre for Music Publication has edited a collection of twenty-two, very different sacred anthems or short cantatas which have never been published before. The works show not only the rather high standard of playing of the town’s ensemble, but also that many of the around 700 inhabitants must have participated in the music performances. The selected works that are representative of the entire music collection range from large double choir anthems to arias for a vocal soloist and orchestra. In addition to strings and organ (and harpsichord), the ensemble also included trumpets, natural horns, oboes, traversos and bassoons; they even had harps. Thus they could assemble a wide array of different sizes of orchestras. Today, many of the composers are somewhat obscure (Johann Ludwig Freydt, Johann Christian Geisler, Christian Gregor, Johann Gottfried Weber), but the resent selection includes also works by more famous composers such as Daniel Gottlob Türk and Johann Heinrich Rolle. The works not only provide us with a fine insight into the musical activities of the Moravian community but they also give us a greater understanding of why contemporary society was so fascinated by the results of the congregation which, besides trade, industry and education, also embraced the importance of music in everyday life.
2020
Transmission of sacred music between Bohemia and Dresden as seen in the collection of Jan Dismas Zelenka This paper addresses the question of how the Bohemian violone player Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745) acquired a substantial collection of sacred music for use in Dresden's first post-Reformation Catholic church, which was established by August II and dedicated in 1708. This royal chapel was housed in the renovated court theatre "Am Taschenberg", and it was open for public worship. The collection of sacred music accumulated by Zelenka hints at his ambitious nature because a library such as his would have been a prerequisite for a role of musical responsibility-clearly a position to which he aspired! By 1734, when Zelenka was appointed "Kirchen Compositeur" to the Dresden court, he had acquired (either through composition or by collecting) almost fifty Mass settings (including Masses by Palestrina that he and Philipp Troyer copied in Vienna during 1717), 1 together with Mass movements, sacred Arias and Motets, and a number of Offertoria. Zelenka had composed a great many works for the Office of Vespers, in addition to which he had collected about sixty psalm and Magnificat settings by other composers. He also held settings of Litanies and Marian antiphons, and he had written at least two Requiems and music for Holy Week. Twice by 1731 he had set the Ambrosian Hymn, and Il serpente di bronzo (ZWV 61), the first of three large-scale oratorios, had been composed. 2 The greater part of Zelenka's music collection was written, collected, and revised between 1725 and the early 1730s during that era known as the Interregnum, a term used by Wolfgang Horn to designate those years between the death of Kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729) and February 1734 when Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783) arrived to take up his position as Kapellmeister. 3 When the catalogue (Catalogo) of the music collection of Dresden's new Catholic court church (the Hofkirche) was finalised in March 1765 under the supervision of the Dresden court 1 Zelenka's copies of Mass settings by Palestrina are included in the third volume (Liber III) of his collection titled Collectaneorum Musicoru[m]. libri 4 de diversis Authoribus. D-Dl: Mus.1-B-98. On the contents of Liber III,
Kwartalnik Młodych Muzykologów UJ, 2017
The article focuses on the context of Hieronim Feicht's Requiem, which was written during World War II. The main aspect of it is to present main thoughts on mass settings composed by Feicht and to give basic information about their performances given by the choir of theological seminary students of the Congregation of the Mission in Kraków-Stradom. Many of extant documents provide us with precise knowledge about the repertoire and solemnities during which it was sung. Except for performances, the article presents the praxis of performing requiem masses in the first half of the 20 th century. Taking this context into consideration, the author presents a brief analysis of the Feicht's requiem mass setting.
De Musica Disserenda, 2018
The organist Christian Michael Wolff (1707–1789), who spent nearly his whole life in his native city of Stettin (today, Szczecin in Poland), has until recently attracted little attention as a composer. He has been disadvantaged by working in a very peripheral, provincial centre, but more particularly by the simple fact that it was only in the 1770s, when he was already advanced in age, that he began to publish his music systematically. Hardly known at all are his four relatively early (c. 1740) orchestral works preserved in Musik- och Teaterbiblioteket, Stockholm. These comprise two concertos for flute and strings, an oboe concerto and a sinfonia for strings. Earlier studies of Wolff’s life and works, most notably one by Werner Freytag (1936), have brought to light his brief period of residence in Berlin (1729–1732) and accurately linked him in a general way to the Berlin school of composers represented by such figures as J.J. Quantz and C.P.E. Bach. They have identified his main published collections, consisting of a set of six “accompanied” sonatas for harpsichord (1776), a collection of 37 songs with written-out keyboard accompaniment (1777), a set of duets for two flutes (1778) and his final magnum opus, a collection of 57 chorale preludes for organ (1782). The scholarly evaluation of his music, however, has been coloured from the start by negative perceptions of the galant style, from which only the most recent commentaries have been able partially to free themselves. The most progressive, original and attractive features of Wolff’s later music are all prefigured in the orchestral works in Stockholm. The consistency of his musical personality and his treatment of elements such as rhythm and form make it certain that the “Wolff” (without forename) of the concertos and sinfonia is the same man as the author of the collections – bearing in mind that this surname, with or without doubling of the final consonant, is shared by several German composers active during the same period. But the orchestral works remain firmly within the “late baroque” orbit – their natural comparators are works by such men as Hasse, Quantz or Vinci – whereas the late works all display to a greater or lesser extent empfindsam and, indeed, pre-classical features. Analysis of the manuscript parts in Stockholm, all of which belong to the “Utile Dulci” collection (consultable in digital form) and have been thoroughly investigated by scholars with regard to their bibliographic aspects, reveals that they were copied out in the mid or late 1740s by a group of rather inexpert and careless scribes under the direction of the concertmaster of the court orchestra, Per Brant (1714–1767), who was also a collector of music and concert promoter in his own right. It is unlikely that they were acquired at first hand from Wolff himself: a second, anonymously preserved source for the oboe concerto in Schwerin suggests that the composer’s orchestral works were already in circulation in northern Germany, and so makes it more likely that it was from one or more places outside Stettin – perhaps Berlin itself – that they came into Brant’s hands. The concertos are notable for a masterly and imaginative application of ritornello form (conforming closely to the advice given to composers by Quantz in his Versuch), capacious but not over-inflated dimensions, rhythmic sophistication, frequent dialogues between basso and bassetto, a mastery of idiomatic writing, in both technical and aesthetic respects, for woodwind instruments, occasional injections of contrapuntal rigour and a strong sense of structural and melodic continuity. Not only Vivaldi, as one would automatically expect, but also Locatelli and Tartini stand behind these works. The sinfonia betrays the influence of Vinci and the Neapolitans but advances even further than the concertos towards the classical musical idiom. The high quality of Wolff’s orchestral works (and other music) shows that his rapid descent into obscurity during the early nineteenth century was undeserved as a final verdict. It is time to resurrect it, and him.
2012
In recent decades, the music of Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745) has been the object of increasing interest to scholars and performers of eighteenth-century music. Zelenka was one of a contingent of Bohemian musicians working at the Dresden court during the first half of the eighteenth century, when connections between the Province of Bohemia and the Saxon city were strong. The repertoire of sacred music accumulated and performed for Dresden's Catholic court church during Zelenka's career represents one of the crowning artistic achievements of that court. However, a detailed study of the complete set of Zelenka's Ave regina coelorum settings (ZWV 128) has not yet been undertaken.