Jan Dismas Zelenka, Missa Paschalis, ZWV 7: ‘Kyrie. Christe eleison’
The last part of John Eliot Gardiner’s Music in the Castle of Heaven is devoted to Bach’s Mass in B Minor, and its performance in Dresden where Bach’s contemporary (and seemingly friend) Zelenka was the court Capellmeister. Gardiner mentions that Bach’s composition likely influenced some of Zelenka’s later work - I haven’t done the research to establish if this might be the case here.
There are three Baroque composers I am listening to regularly - one might even say religiously - at the moment : Schütz, Bach and Zelenka. The first I sought out because, in Gardiner’s telling, he was a precursor to and likely influence on Bach. Zelenka I came across by happenstance (read: Spotify Baroque playlist), inspired by Herman Hesse’s Glass Bead Game, though in that novel the composer most frequently mentioned is Purcell (more on whom in another post, hopefully). Handel, despite parochial interest in The Messiah, is a bit too flamboyant to my ear; and Vivaldi, though I’m sure brilliant, isn’t really on my radar yet either. Instead it’s the sacred music of Mitteleuropa that is drawing my attention, like the aural equivalent of Caravaggio.
To my mind, I like Schütz because he is comparatively austere in form - for example his Matthew Passion is entirely a capella, described in this review as falling “midway between the cool impersonality of plainchant recitation tones and the more impassioned idiom of operatic recitative”, a contains only the gospel text - while at the same time vividly exciting in content, the Kleine Geistliche Konzerte (”little spiritual concert” if my German is correct) and Psalmen David being full of moments of almost pop melody in the polyphonic vocals.
Bach is of course wonderful, and I agree with Gardiner that he is unparalleled in the emotional expression of his music - whether that is a channeling of devotional fervour or an outpouring of personal grief - as well as its creative dexterity. Yet precisely because it is so accomplished it tends to feel a bit too much - a bit too rhythmic, perhaps, with every flourish having its place - and I gravitate back towards the more easily enjoyable sounds of these other composers.
More similar in orchestration and style, Zelenka is noted as a master of counterpoint style - as was Bach, of course, though perhaps he could be said to have transcended it, whereas Zelenka relies too much on the pyrotechnics of instrumental polyphony. What caught my attention initially, however, was the slow gracefulness of the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah - the stately progress of the strings under the bass vocals (while suited to the content, the composition may have also been influenced by the lack of suitable singers in a higher register at the Dresden court at the time) - that exceeds the contemplativeness of anything I’ve yet heard from Bach. There’s a touch of that I think too in this Kyrie, although equally it is similar enough to the Bach style (or to that of the age, perhaps). At the other end of the scale, Zelenka’s sonatas are pyrotechnics at their best, a fizzing mix of instruments that light up my brain as if I have an understanding of the mathematics at work (although consciously, of course, I have little or none).
(Source: Spotify)
