Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses

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    The Vespers psalms of Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745) in the liturgy and life of the Dresden Catholic court church
    STOCKIGT, JANICE BEVERLEY ( 1994)
    This thesis examines the Vespers psalm settings of the Bohemian born composer Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745), compositions which represent a significant component of the liturgical music he wrote for the Catholic court church of Dresden. The works of this contemporary and acquaintance of Johann Sebastian Bach have suffered from a series of historical neglects and injuries culminating in the bombing of Dresden in 1945, an action which caused damage to and loss of contemporary sources of Zelenka's music. Documentation surrounding the circumstances of its composition and performance has been missing since that time. Part I of the thesis investigates an unbroken set of annual letters (Annuae Literae) written between 1710 and 1740 by Dresden Superiors of the Society of Jesus who had been brought from the Province of Bohemia to staff the recently-founded Catholic court church of Dresden (1708). Happily, these letters survive in the Roman Jesuit archive (Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu). The conversion to Catholicism of the Saxon Elector August II re-established that religion in Lutheran Saxony and as a consequence, Catholic churches, most of them open for public worship, were founded within Saxon Electoral residences. The most prestigious of these was the chapel located in the renovated theatre of the Dresden palace. The liturgical and historical information to emerge from the study of these Annuae Literae not only provides an expansive view of the developing conditions under which Zelenka (and Heinichen) composed liturgical works but, in several instances, these sources furnish precise information on the occasions for which specific works were written. In Part II of the thesis, Zelenka's settings of Vespers psalms are examined. From the Annuae Literae the circumstances surrounding the office of Vespers of the Dresden Catholic court church have been extrapolated and a Sanctoral has been reconstructed for this era of the church in which Vespers psalm sequences appropriate to the feasts of the liturgical year are suggested. A chronology, based upon palaeographic features of the autograph scores and upon the proposed Sanctoral, has been offered for Zelenka's undated psalm settings. Interpretations of the mottos which always appear at the conclusion of the settings indicate the identity of the person(s) who commissioned these compositions. These settings, most of which were written during the latter half of the 1720s, reveal aspects of Zelenka's musical originality. Yet, they were composed within established traditions of text treatment and structure of psalm composition, traditions to be seen in psalm settings of his Italian, Bohemian and Austrian contemporaries and predecessors. A great variety of manners of setting the doxology text is to be distinguished in the extant compositions. Scrutiny of the scoring indications in Zelenka's extant autographs, as well as re-workings to be seen on scores of his psalm collection, provide evidence of changing performers and altering performance practices in the Dresden Catholic court church during the third and fourth decades of the eighteenth century, reflecting the development of the distinguished musical style for which Dresden was to become famous. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the features of Zelenka's highly personal musical style. Primary sources include extracts from the foundation documents of the Dresden Catholic court church and transliterations (with translation) of musically and liturgically relevant sections of the Allnuae Literae from the Dresden Jesuits. Over 100 musical examples, many taken from unpublished works of Zelenka, together with tables, plates, diagrams and bibliography are presented. Two appendices accompany the thesis.