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, 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. It is thought he may have received some musical training in 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 1710. He studied music in
Vienna and
Venice in 1715 and 1716. He was back in Dresden by 1719. Except for a visit in 1723 to Prague and an occasional trip, he remained a resident of Dresden until his death.
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 named a mere church music composer. Zelenka died in Dresden in 1745.
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...."
*Six
trio sonatas (no. 1,2,4,5 and 6 for two
oboes,
bassoon and
basso continuo, in the third a
violin replaces the second oboe) and eleven other instrumental works
*Twenty-three masses, some missing, and a number of mass movements
*Four requiem settings
*Fifty-three psalm settings, some missing
*
A simplified version of Wolfgang Reiche's catalog of Zelenka's works*
A Zelenka Page
