Wolfgang Horn and Zelenka

Abstract

This paper uses the late Wolfgang Horn’s own reflections about his relationship with the music of Jan Dismas Zelenka as a lens through which to consider broader questions about the nature of the Bohemian composer’s music, its reception history, and music historiography. Based on an interview conducted with Horn during the Zelenka Festival in prague, october 2017, it considers Horn’s legacy as a driver of, and witness to, the rise of Zelenka studies in the 1980s, and the impact of this German scholar on our understanding of Zelenka today. it is not the aim of this paper to present and discuss systematically all the themes that emerged in the analy-sis of the interview with Horn; readers are referred to the author’s phD thesis for those findings. rather, this paper uses that interview as the basis for something of a eulogy for an esteemed member of our scholarly community: a reflection on Horn’s contribution to the field of Zelenka studies and the personal and intellectual questions that his death raised for the author. Because of this, the somewhat informal tone of the spoken paper—presented at the Zelenka Conference in prague, october 2019—has been retained in this written version.