Miserere ZWV56 by Collegium 1704

Yes Seb, another holy moment with the Master. What an incredibly beautiful work this is and with many familiar passages reused in later works. It was well worth the long wait. Glad that Luks and Collegium 1704 did record this, as it links nicely with their epic recording of ZWV 55. The ensemble sounds very good, the tempo is natural and overall it’s a performance of great maturity and elegance.

As for the circumstances for the request of prince Friedrich August to Zelenka to omit the Miserere in 1722, this has been explained by Jan Stockigt (as I did recount in a Forum entry in 2010):

"There was a reason for this (as Jan Stockigt has pointed out in her paper about the churchings of Crown Princess Maria Josepha); at the time Maria Josepha was pregnant and probably could not sit still for long. In fact she would have complications and the boy she gave birth to, the wonderful friend of music Friedrich Christian, was born with a congenital physical defect [cerebral palsy]."

Re the Miserere performed in 1737: I seriously doubt ZWV 56 was the long work heard on that occasion, there’s nothing there for the Italian castrati and trombones were, according to the late Wolfgang Horn, not used in Dresden after 1725. ZWV 57 is composed in 1738. But Zelenka directed not only his own works in the Catholic court church, but also those of others. By the mid-1730s he had several settings of the text in his grand-arsenal, including at least three prepared at exactly that time. The longest might be by Villicus – the score (D-Dl, Mus.2820-D-1) is 67 pages (I have not counted the bars). The score copied by ZS1 is from the mid-1730s, with Zelenka markings and additions. Another setting copied by the same scribe at the time is by Caldara (Mus.2170-E-4); his music was performed often during this period. Another Miserere from Zelenka’s collection that comes to mind is the third setting of "Signor. G:K:", which I have argued is Zelenka’s student and fellow double bass player of the Hofkapelle, Johann Samuel Kaÿser (Giovanni Kaÿser), who worked closely with the Bohemian from 1733 onwards. The score of the third G:K: setting has been dated by ca. 1736-1739 by W.Horn. The settings by Gottlob Harrer and Augustin Uhlig, two other Zelenka students, also date from this period but are shorter I think.

Finally, while I am thrilled with the great new recording of ZWV 56, my heart sinks when I read the accompanying notes. There’s just so much which is wrong and factually incorrect there, it’s embarrassing. I can not understand why such a brilliant orchestra, which takes such good care of all the smallest details in the music, can present these badly informed texts to its listeners. Anyway, I do hope that someone can open up the eyes of Luks and co. to all the fine studies that have been published in the last 10 years about the life of our composer.