MUSICA FLOREA, COLLEGIUM FLOREUM, MAREK ŠTRYNCL, dirigent www.musicaflorea.cz
The recording features two exceptional compositions of 18th-century Czech composers. Jan Køtitel Vaòhal and Jan Zach, who was one generation older, had much in common. They both went abroad, where they gained a good reputation and paved the way for their followers known as the Viennese classicists. In their day, both of them were among the best, as recognized by their contemporaries. However, the musical language in the 18th century was progressing at such a high pace that their compositions shone brightly for a short time only to quickly fade away under layers of new and even better works of music. This is why their quality was not rediscovered until the 21st century.
Jan Zach (1713, Dehtary near Èelákovice – 1773, Ellwangen) fully deserves the title of Czech musical emigrant. He belonged to a strong generation of composers who gained their musical experience during the happiest years of Baroque Prague, but the subsequent War of the Austrian Succession (1740) involuntarily ensured their success abroad. In the then Roman Empire, there was hardly any residence without Czech chapel-masters and instrumentalists. In 1745, Jan Zach became a chapel-master of the Elector-Archbishop of Mainz and provided music for the imperial election of Francis of Lorraine. After his voluntary departure, he traveled freely. He earned his living by teaching at courts and monasteries and by selling his own works of music. Jan Zach's compositions underwent a considerable stylistic evolution, which can be described as Pre-Classicism. The last of the three Requiems is considered one of his best late compositions. It has been preserved thanks to its copy in the Cistercian monastery in Stams, Tyrol, where Zach stayed several times at the end of his life. The form of setting a requiem to music used to be quite conservative. Listening to such music revived memories of all the previous decades in back-then listeners, evoking in them gratitude for the lives of the people for whom the requiem was sung. It is therefore easy to be transported back to the 1770s when listening to this composition. We have the opportunity to hear the entire stylistic evolution of Zach's musical life, from the late Baroque of Vivaldi’s and Zelenka’s contemporaries to the time when his generation passed the imaginary baton to the Viennese classicists. His setting of the verse "Tuba mirum" to music is unconventional in the best sense of the word. The sound of trumpets summoning the living and the deceased before the throne of Christ the Judge does not evoke fear, but trust and gratitude for an invitation to something that goes beyond comparison with even the greatest Baroque celebrations that the composer and his contemporaries and listeners experienced.
Jan Køtitel Vaòhal (1739, Nechanice – 1813, Vienna) was one of many Czechs who settled in Vienna and are not considered musical emigrants, because the Danube metropolis had been the capital of a common state for almost four centuries. In the 18th century, Vienna was recognized alongside Paris as the main center of European music, and the Viennese musical scene would not have been complete without Czechs. Thanks to the favor of his wealthy and music-loving friends, Vaòhal bought his freedom from serfdom, perfected his skills in Italy and eventually led an independent life as a professional musician. He became a sought-after teacher, his compositions were in demand by publishers and he was invited to join a quartet, where he played as the fourth member alongside Dittersdorf, Haydn and Mozart. Vaòhal's sacred compositions are in no way inferior to the hundreds of opuses of all kinds and forms. “Kyrie and Gloria in G” is an example of a solemn mass written in the musical language of Viennese Classicism but still benefiting from the advantages of the old style of composing as a sequence of closed musical numbers. One of the particular strengths of Vaòhal's compositional skill are his final fugues. They preserve the mastership of Baroque counterpoint, but the voice leading and orchestral support are already moving towards minimalism, clarity and legibility for the listener. Vaòhal's vocal fugues, in which the orchestra is an equal partner to the choir, take this art further. We can hear in them the future fugues of the 19th century, as masterfully composed e.g. by Bruckner or Dvoøák.
Tomáš Slavický
Further recordings by Marek Štryncl & Musica Florea, the period instruments ensemble:
