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New York (USA) EDT

PUBLISHING AND EDITING THE MUSIC OF JAN DISMAS ZELENKA: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
(3.30 – 5.30)

Chaired by Janice Stockigt

 

3.30 – 4.00
Michael TALBOT (read by Samantha OWENS, Victoria University, Wellington): A Few Thoughts on a Zelenka Collected (or even Complete) Edition

Michael Talbot is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Liverpool and a Fellow of the British Academy. Since the early 1970s he has produced books, articles and editions on a wide spectrum of music ranging from the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century and embracing a wide variety of genres and nationalities. Best known is his work on Italian composers, notably Albinoni and Vivaldi, although in recent years he has increasingly written on minor British composers from the same period. Most relevant to Zelenka is his book The Sacred Vocal Music of Antonio Vivaldi (1995).

 

4.00 – 4.20
Jiří K. KROUPA (Prague): Czech Zelenka editions until 2000 

PhDr. Jiří K. Kroupa (born 1964, 15th June, in Opočno, Eastern Bohemia)

Education:

  • 1982-87: Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno: Czech language and literature – history (1987: PhDr.) 

Employment:

  • 1988-2002: Institute for Classi­cal Studies of the ASCR, Prague: a member of staff 
  • 2002-2008: Institute of Botany of the ASCR, Prague: a member of staff (digitization of rare herbaria collections, data analysis, internet database systems, computing in botany)
  • since 2002: Association for Central European Cultural Studies, Prague: president & member of staff

Other professional activities:

  • since 2000: chief editor of the series Clavis monumentorum musicorum Regni Bohemiae (15 vols.)
  • since 2005: chief co-editor of the scholarly revue Antiqua Cuthna
  • since 2013: chief editor of the online scholarly revue Clavibus unitis
  • passim: editorial works for the publishing house KLP – Koniasch Latin Press (since 1993, more than 100 scholarly titles)

Topics:

History of culture in the Bohemian Lands (esp. music and literature), textual criticism, correspondence of Bedřich Smetana…

 

4.20 – 4.40
Andrew FRAMPTON (University of Oxford): Towards a Critical Zelenka Complete Edition: Problems and Possibilities 

Andrew Frampton is Lecturer in Musicology at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford. He obtained a DPhil in musicology from the University of Oxford in 2021, which focused on the manuscript and printed musical sources related to the Berlin court composer Johann Friedrich Agricola (1720–1774). He co-authored the revised Grove Music Online article on Jan Dismas Zelenka, and contributed a chapter to the volume J.S. Bach in Australia: Studies in Reception and Performance (Lyrebird Press, 2018); he has also published in such journals as Eighteenth-Century Music, Understanding Bach, Early Music and Musicology Australia, a special issue of which he guest-edited (with Kerry Murphy and Frederic Kiernan) as Zelenka, Bach and the Eighteenth-Century German Baroque: Essays in Honour of Janice B. Stockigt. Dr Frampton was a Merton College Prize Scholar for 2018–2019 for his work on Agricola, and he is a member of the advisory council of Bach Network, based in London.

Over the past twenty years, there has been an explosion in the performance and recording of Zelenka’s music, alongside a wealth of new source discoveries that have now rendered all the published source and work catalogues out of date. Although these developments owe much to the systematic digitisation of Zelenka’s autograph manuscripts, scholars and publishers have largely failed to meet an increasing demand for reliable modern editions of his music. The uncoordinated, haphazard approach that has thus far been taken to the editing and publication of Zelenka’s works is a major factor in the ongoing hindrance of his reception and threatens to consign him permanently to the status of a cult figure.

This paper argues there is now a pressing need for a truly international critical edition of Zelenka’s complete works, alongside a thorough revision of the Zelenka-Werke-Verzeichnis. I discuss the limitations of the editions that are currently available and their varying approaches to textual criticism. Drawing on models from both the post-war Gesamtausgabe tradition and more recent publication projects (notably the ongoing C.P.E. Bach complete edition), I present a possible plan for how a complete Zelenka edition might look, including its division into series, supplementary materials and broad editorial guidelines. I also explore significant potential challenges that such a project faces, including cross-border collaborations and dealing with missing or inaccessible sources, and consider possibilities for the integration of print and online elements to place the edition at the forefront of developments in digital musicology.

 

4.40 – 5.00
Denis COLLINS (University of Queensland): Editing Zelenka’s Music: The view from Music Analysis

Denis Collins is Associate Professor of Musicology and Deputy Head of School at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. His research interests lie in the history of counterpoint, most especially canon, in late medieval and early modern music. Support for his research on the history of canonic techniques has been provided by two Australian Research Council Discovery Projects, both held jointly with  Jason Stoessel. Recent and forthcoming publications include articles in Acta Musicologica, Music Theory Online, and Journal of the Alamire Foundation as well as several chapters in edited volumes. He was co-editor of J.S. Bach in Australia: Studies in Reception and Performance (Lyrebird Press, 2018). He is the current Editor of the journal Musicology Australia.

Of the many scholarly perspectives brought to bear on the music of Zelenka’s music in recent years, one of the least represented has been from the field known as Music Analysis. Although a multitude of critical approaches exist within this field, those that can offer new understandings of Zelenka’s compositional language have perhaps the most promise and utility for any collective undertaking to assemble Zelenka’s music into a new critical edition. Zelenka’s mastery of established and emerging compositional techniques is beyond doubt, but how exactly he put these techniques into operation across different genres as yet awaits systematic elucidation. This is due in part to the lack of easily available editions that maintain consistency of approach and ease of use. At the same time, preparation of an edition requires analytical expertise that can provide insight into how revisions, variants or particularly striking departures from compositional norms may relate to research findings from other specialist fields. In some cases, it is possible, through analytical investigation, to propose new solutions to where sources are unclear – or where Zelenka was perhaps deliberately obscure – about how a composition could be realised in performance. Many precedents exist for how analytical rigour can help underpin the editorial enterprise: preparation of the New Josquin Edition (NJE), for instance, drew upon many analytical perspectives and publication of its volumes has spurred voluminous amounts of research in leading musicology and music theory journals as well as in published books of essays. A similarly bright future could await Zelenka scholarship, with attendant benefits to the ongoing reception of his music by performers, audiences, educators, historians and theorists.

 

5.00 – 5.20
Frederic KIERNAN (University of Melbourne): The challenges of editing Zelenka’s “Gaude laetare” (ZWV 168)

Frederic Kiernan is an early career researcher who holds a PhD in Music (Musicology) from the University of Melbourne, as well as a BA/BMus and MMus from the same university. He is currently Research Coordinator of the Creativity and Wellbeing Research Initiative at the University of Melbourne and Secretary of the Musicological Society of Australia. His research uses methods from historical musicology, the history of emotions, and the psychology and sociology of music to explore the intersection of music, creativity, emotion and wellbeing. He published a critical edition of six works (dated 1737) by the Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka with A-R Editions (Wisconsin) in 2018, and co-authored the revised article on Zelenka for Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press) with Janice B. Stockigt and Andrew Frampton. He has also published research articles in Musicology Australia, Clavibus unitis, Emotions: History, Culture, Society, Context, and Musicae Scientiae (in press).

This paper will discuss key editorial issues that arise in relation to Zelenka’s motet “Gaude laetare“ (ZWV 168). The A-major motet, whose autograph score is dated 17 May 1731, was first performed three days later, on the Feast of the Holy Trinity. Major difficulties include the damaged state of the score and the key, which is a difficult one for the baroque oboe and was rarely used by Zelenka or his contemporaries for works involving that instrument. The inclusion of oboe is specified by various sources including the score’s cover page and Zelenka’s Inventarium, as well as by contemporary performing conventions in Dresden as they pertained to multi-movement “ordinary” works based on concertante principles. A set of twenty-two performance parts once held with the score in Dresden is now missing, which presumably includes parts for oboe. How might oboe parts for this motet be reconstructed, given that no known parts for oboe have survived from this work’s immediate historical context that could exemplify how such a reconstruction could be made?

 

Discussion: 10 minutes

 

5.30 – 6.00
BREAK

 

CURRENT ISSUES IN THE EDITING OF BAROQUE MUSIC
(6.00 – 8.00)

Chaired by Thomas Hochradner

 

6.00 – 6.20
Thomas HOCHRADNER: Introduction to the Section „Current Issues in the Editing of Baroque Music“

‚Urtext‘ was the magic word in music philology from the 1970s to the beginning of the 21st century and in fact, is still predominant in a literal discussion on its contemporary significance. Nevertheless, some preconditions have changed. The idea of an ideal setting of the work, of a control of its sound shape in the sense of a last will of the composer, once fascinated musicology and became established, even more because the discipline felt legitimized in a standing which was located above every artistic realization.

But two sustainable emancipation processes have now called this self-image into question. On the one hand, an upgrading of the role of the interpreter has led to the acceptance of various equal artistic strategies and solutions, also from a philological point of view. On the other hand, diverse transcripts have gained in importance, because they are evidence of local performance practices and report a diversity in the appearance of baroque music that is obscured by unifying ‚sample editions‘.

From these considerations it follows that the strict classification into ‚right‘ or ‚wrong‘ needs to be reconsidered. Regardless of whether it is tempo and dynamics, articulation, ornamentation et al., in the edition of musical works especially from the Baroque period, a network of possible implementations is to be reflected upon, which – under new auspices for justification – are offered by ‚instructive editions‘, formerly dismissed as an enemy image. How can historical musicology respond to these challenges?

 

6.20 – 6.40
Tomasz JEZ (Instytut Muzykologii Uniwersytet Warszawski): From the sunny side of the Sudetes. The music of Czech Jesuits in Wrocław

Tomasz Jeż studied musicology in Warsaw, Göttingen and Berlin. After his doctoral promotion, he was employed at the University of Warsaw. As part of the “Columbus” program of the Foundation for Polish Science, in 2007/08 he completed a scientific internship at the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu. He is the author of four books and over sixty articles devoted to the issues of source studies and ideological aspects of musical culture. His main field of research is the musical culture of Silesia and Poland in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. He is the head of the research project entitled The musical repertoire of the Society of Jesus in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1565–1773), financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education as part of the “National Program for the Development of Humanities”. The research results of the participants of this project are published in the series Fontes Musicae in Polonia, which includes catalogues of musical items, facsimile editions of sources, thematic monographs and critical editions of the musical repertoire. They appear simultaneously in a printed version and in pdf files available at www.fontesmusicae.pl

The collection of musical manuscripts of the canonesses regular in Wrocław (now University Library in Warsaw) is a unique set of parts from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries on a regional and European scale. The repertoire recorded in over 450 sources, belonged to Chori S. Annae and Chori S. Jacobi, reveals not only the original and high level of musical traditions nurtured by the nuns of this monastery, but also the extensive contacts of their convent with numerous institutions of musical culture in Silesia and neighbouring countries. Noteworthy are the musical links of Wrocław convent with other monasteries of Europe, which in times of Jan Dismas Zelenka were key centres of propagating new trends and stylistic tendencies. Particularly interesting in this group of repertoire are works from Jesuit circles, which used to be the most dynamically developing network of musical culture transmission.

In this group we find compositions of Jesuits, almost all of them born in Czech lands – as Georg Braun, Karl Pelikán, Joannes Possival and Karl Rabovius – or at least active there for some years – as Joannes Faber, Martin Kretzmer, Leopold Liebstein, and Karl Pfeiffer (two compositions by Pfeiffer and Rabovius are by the way contrafacta of the works written by Francesco della Porta and Giacomo Carissimi…). There are also unique copies of compositions by the organist of the Jesuit Church in Kladsko, which for over 40 years was Nicolaus Frölich. It seems that the canonesses of Wrocław convent were very interested exactly at the repertoire composed by Jesuits active in the Czech area. The music of their interest has been nowadays edited in some volumes at the www.fontesmusicae.pl website.

Discussion: 5 minutes

 

6.45 – 7.05
Maciej JOCHYMCZYK (Jagiellonian University in Kraków): The life and work of Jacek Szczurowski SJ in the light of the editions published in the Fontes Musicae in Polonia series.

The paper consists of two main parts. In the first one the music editions published in the Fontes Musicae in Polonia (series C) will be presented. The series, containing 31 volumes of critical editions, has been created as a result of the project entitled “The Music Repertoire of the Society of Jesus in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth”, financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. The project started in 2016 and terminates this year.

The second part of the paper will focus on the life and work of Jacek Szczurowski SJ (1716? – after 1774), who certainly was the most widely known and prolific composer among the Jesuits active in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Discussion: 5 minutes

 

7.10 – 7.30
Peter MARTINČEK (Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava): The Editing of Vocal Compositions Surviving in the Form of New German Organ Tablature

Since 2007, the Musicalia Istropolitana series of editions of early music has been presenting noteworthy, previously unpublished historical sources. Its ten volumes contain mainly compositions from the Baroque and the Classicist periods and aim not only to address musicologists but also to provide high-quality study materials for performers. Taking compositions from this series as an example, we will examine the issue of transcribing and reconstructing early Baroque, polychoral, Protestant compositions that survived in the Levoča Music Collection. These relatively complete compositions are intabulated in tablature scores with new German organ tablature. However, this non-standard notation is challenging for music historians and poses many questions while finalizing the compositions into a publishable form.

Discussion: 5 minutes

 

7.35 – 7.55
Alexander RAUSCH (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, ACDH-CH): Editing Fux operas in/for practice and theory

The edition of music-dramatic works raises questions on various levels; in addition to the musical sources in the narrower sense, the versions, the textual tradition and in individual cases even the dramaturgy are decisive for the constitution of the score. In the Fux opera performances of recent years, the target audience always had to be considered: a volume for the historical-critical edition (scholarship), a conducting score for a “normal” performance (practice), orchestral parts with various cuts for a version under the conditions of the pandemic, and so on.

The paper will shed light on the various possibilities and forms of musical edition using examples from Fux’s operas. This also raises the question of an authentic work form and to what extent the established methods of music philology are valid for this genre and for baroque music in general. In the absence of autographs, the role and understanding of the copyists (of the Viennese court chapel) must also be examined.

Finally, technical details will be addressed, as these influence editorial decisions and, in positive cases, reduce or eliminate errors. An outlook on a new inter-media project will discuss new ways of digital editions.

Discussion: 5 minutes

 

8.00 – 9.00
LUNCH BREAK

 

FREE PAPERS (ANY TOPIC RELEVANT TO ZELENKA’S MUSIC, LIFE, AND TIMES)
(9.00 – 11.00)

Chaired by Tomasz Jeż

 

9.00 – 9.20
Shelley HOGAN (University of Melbourne): Changing basses: Marin Marais’ Alcyone tempest scene as evidence of changing orchestral practices in Zelenka’s earliest Dresden years 

Shelley Hogan completed her PhD thesis in musicology in 2019 at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne, where she has been casual academic staff since 2006.  Her current research encompasses eighteenth century orchestral practices and employment conditions of musicians.  She is also a sought after orchestral double bassist and teacher.

The Sächsische Landesbibliothek—Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Dresden holds a wealth of orchestral performance sets from the Dresden Hofkapelle during the reign of Saxon Elector August the Strong (r. 1694–1733).  Particularly precious amongst this special music collection are manuscript performance materials where written on individual parts in ink or pencil are names of specific musicians.  Named parts are most associated with a narrow window of years from the re-establishment of the court orchestra in mid 1709, a time that aligns with the arrival and earliest years of Jan Dismas Zelenka’s Dresden career as a double bassist in the orchestra.  One such set is the symphony from the Act IV tempest scene of Marin Marais 1706 opera Alcyone (D-Dl, Mus. 2111-F-3).

The instrumental movement in Marais’s opera is renowned in Paris opera history as the very first repertoire to specifically require double basses.  And this Dresden performance set is worthy of study as a case study of imported French performance practices in a celebrated German orchestra of the early eighteenth century.

Yet the set of twenty individual parts also captures evidence of separately prepared performance materials and distinct performances separated by years.  Rather than identifying a composer’s—or, in this instance, a copyist’s—last hand that might be the goal for preparing an edition, this paper argues that the greater value in these materials may better lie in the clues about date specific developments in how the bass line was realised in this Dresden context during the pivotal second decade of orchestral change in the eighteenth century.

Discussion: 10 minutes

 

9.30 – 9.50
Jóhannes ÁGÚSTSSON (Reykjavík): Scheffler and Seipt: Zelenka Copyists ‘ZS 1’ and ‘ZS 2’ Revealed

Karl Heller’s landmark publication (1971) on the large collection of Vivaldi’s manuscripts in Dresden, is generally considered to be the first attempt to identify the copyists responsible for copying the music in the former royal collection now held by the SLUB. Today, 50 years later, much has been accomplished in this ever fascinating but, admittedly, problematic subgenre of music studies. The names of many of most important copyists working at the Dresden court are now known, and their overall contribution to the sound of the famous Hofkapelle has been rightfully acknowledged.

Two surveys on the copyists used by Zelenka appeared in 1993: first, Wolfgang Reich’s article, which is an example of the minefield handwriting and copyist analysis can be; and second, Wolfgang Horn’s article, where he answered and refuted Reich’s findings in typical forensic fashion. The most important aspect of Horn’s study deals with the three unidentified copyists he designated as ‘ZS [Zelenka-Schreiber] 0’, ‘ZS 1’ and ‘ZS 2’. The first was Zelenka’s main copyist from the mid-1720s until the early 1730s; his name remains to this day unknown. The other two were the Bohemian composer’s main copyists from the early 1730s and onwards.

This paper introduces for the first time the names and biographical details of these two men, who both sadly passed away in Dresden before 1745. The fact that Zelenka worked so closely with them until the end of both of their lives, shows that he very much appreciated their services. In effect, the two copyists were Zelenka’s contemporary editors, fully licensed to prepare scores and parts from his autographs and music collection.

Discussion: 10 minutes

 

10.00 – 10.20
Claudia LUBKOLL (Dresden): „Watermark ‘Baroque ornament’ “

Musicologist and staff member of the music department of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB). Editor/publisher of 18th century music, mostly Johann Gottlieb Naumann and Johann David Heinichen. Researcher of paper and watermarks of the 18th century.

This paper examines the Bohemian watermark ‘Baroque ornament’ and the use of that paper for the music of Zelenka and his contemporaries in Dresden. There are plenty of descriptions of that watermark, for example from Bach digital: ‘Barockornament mit Hufeisen und Vierblatt’, ‘Wappen mit Hufeisen’, or Weiß/Kobayashi in 1985: ‘Kummet in Kartusche’, ‘Kummet in Zierschild’ (WZ 131) and ‘horse collar in cartouche’ (RISM). It certainly was made in Chomutov/Bohemia at the time of papermaker Johann Franz Ossendorf, who died in 1741. Usually we know it from flyleaf-paper of Zelenka’s Vesper psalms and from the music paper of four of his autographs (ZWV 71, ZWV 81, ZWV 130, ZWV 190), which dated in 1729. I compared all manuscripts I found in SLUB Dresden with ‘Baroque ornament’ paper by using our thermographic camera. The results are stunning and surprising. This paper tries to explain much more than dating issues, it will answer some questions and will open new aspects.

Discussion: 10 minutes

 

10.30 – 10.50
Václav KAPSA (Czech Academy of Sciences): A knot in the net? To the role of Bohosudov / Mariaschein in the musical contacts between Dresden and Bohemia during Zelenka’s time

After establishing the catholic court in Dresden, the need for liturgical music was met among others by musicians and music from Bohemia. Prague and Osek are prominent and well-known places in this mutual music exchange since we know the local music repertoire and environment. However, other sites, as the Jesuit pilgrim place of Mariaschein / Bohosudov close to the border with Saxony, might also have played a role in this transmission. What the Jesuit sources originating in Mariaschein are telling us about local music and musical contacts with Dresden?

Discussion: 10 minutes