Jan Dismas Zelenka: Psalmi Vespertini II.

Product detailed description

Between mid1725 and late 1728 Jan Dismas Zelenka composed three cycles of thirty-three psalms and Magnificat compositions for Vespers. Each cycle begins with a setting of the psalm Dixit Dominus and it then develops to serve one or more sequences of psalms to serve almost every Vespers service of the liturgical year. In 1726 Zelenka began to enter these psalm settings into the Inventarium rerum Musicarum Ecclesiae servientium, his personal inventory of sacred music that began to be kept on 17 January of that year. His entries demonstrate that the thirty-three Vespers works were conceived in three cycles. These works were composed over a period of three years for the Catholic court church of Dresden, a royal chapel dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity. The unavoidable assumption is that this was a well-considered, deliberate plan. Zelenka listed his collection of thirty-three psalm settings into his Inventarium under the heading of psalms for the whole year. Surprisingly, the listings did not begin with the earliest settings of 1725, but with the settings heard here – the second Vespers cycle that Zelenka began to compose in 1726. This cycle consists of eleven compositions (three settings now are missing) and it would have served the usual cycle of five psalms for Vespers of a Confessor (Vesperae de Confessore. It would seem that Zelenka’s omission from the cycle of the De profundis setting (ZWV 96), was an oversight only to be rectified when he entered the work into the Inventarium (as number 18) at a later time. Peculiarities of Zelenka’s musical notationdefinitely place this De profundis as coming from late in 1727 when it would have been heard during the Christmas octave.