365 – JANKA Petőczová Slovak Academy Of
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Janka PETőCZOVá Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava CORI spezzati IN SEVENTEENTH-Century SPIŠ The cori spezzati style became established in the musical culture of the region of Spiš (Germ. Zips, Hung. Szepes) in the course of the first half of the 17th century. At present, the region of Spiš belongs to the Slovak Republic; in the analysed period it formed part of the Kingdom of Hungary, which, after its defeat at Mohács by the Ottoman Turks in 1526, was integrated into the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy. Musical life flourished in the muni- cipal centres of Upper Hungary. Until 1674, these municipalities successfully preserved their Protestant character despite of the massive Counter-Reformation effort pursued by the Habsburg dynasty.1 The main hubs of the cultivation of polychoral music were the royal free towns of Levoča (Leutschau, Lőcse) and Kežmarok (Käsmark, Késmárk). However, smaller towns like Ľubica (Leibitz), Spišská Belá (Zipser Bela, Szepesbéla), Spišská Sobota (Georgenberg), Poprad (Deutschendorf), Matejovce (Matzdorf), Spišské Vlachy (Wallendorf), Spišské Podhradie (Kirchdrauf, Váralja), Spišská Nová Ves (Zipser Neudorf), Smolník (Schmöllnitz) also contributed to the dissemination of the new Italian compositional technique cori spezzati, which became established in the region at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries.2 The most ancient musical sources documenting the presence of polychoral music in Spiš constitute the manuscripts of the volume SK-Ke N 69192 (olim Rar 14), deposited in the Historical Library of the Lycaeum in Kežmarok. The manuscripts, dated 1584, contain tenor parts of Renaissance motets, including cori spezzati pieces by Christian Hollander (ca. 1510/15-1568), Dominique Phinot (ca. 1510-ca. 1556/61), Jacob Handl (1550-1591) and Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594).3 Most relevant for the research in the polychoral music 1 ricHard ryBarič, Dejiny hudobnej kultúry na Slovensku I, Stredovek, renesancia, barok [The history of musical culture of Slovakia i, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque], Bratislava, Opus, 1984; ladislav kačic, Od stredoveku po renesanciu. Barok [From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Baroque] in Dejiny slovenskej hudby od najstarších čias po súčasnosť [The history of Slovak music from the ancient times to the present], ed. Oskár Elschek, Bratislava, Ústav hudobnej vedy Slovenskej akadémie vied - ASCO Art et Science, 1996, pp. 54-138; Janka PeTőczová, Polyphonic and polychoral Musik on the Territory of Slovakia and its Reflections in the Slovakian Musicological Research, «Slovenská hudba», xxii/3-4, 1996, pp. 455-459. 2 Janka PeTőczová, Polychorická hudba I, v európskej renesancii a baroku, v dejinách hudobnej kultúry na Slovensku [Polychoral music i, in the European Renaissance and Baroque, in the history of musical culture of Slovakia] Prešov, Matúš, 1998; ead., Polychorická hudba II, na Spiši v 17. storočí [Polychoral music ii, in Spiš in the 17th century], Prešov, Matúš, 1999; ead., Polychorická hudba III, antológia [Polychoral music iii, anthology], Prešov, Matúš, 1999. 3 The volume 69192 (olim Rar 14) consists of two musical prints (Gallus Dressler, Opus sacrarum cantionum, Nürnberg, 1577; Martin Kinner, Carmen Funebre Musicis, Wittenberg. 1556) and two hand- written appendices, partbooks of vocal voices (mainly tenor voices). marTa Hulková, Hudobný konvolút z Lyceálnej knižnice v Kežmarku. Príspevok k problematike renesančnej hudby na Slovensku (16. storočie) [A music manuscript from the Historical Library of the Lycaeum in Käsmark. Contribution to the problematic of – 365 – Janka Petőczová history in Spiš are the 17th century prints and manuscripts in the Historical Library of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Community in Levoča. They include common musical repertory of the European protestant area and also some unique pieces by lesser-known composers, including musicians who were active in Spiš. Polychoral music is to be found in the prints, hand-written tablature books and partbooks. As many as 100 cori spezzati works by well-known European composers can be found in the most ancient tablature books from the turn of 17th century, in two manuscripts SK-Le 1A (olim 13990a) and SK-Le 2A (olim 13990b) in the Levoča Musical Collection. The repertory includes works by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/26-1594), Gregor Lange (ca. 1540-1587), Jacob Regnart (1540/45-1599), Hans Leo Hassler (1562-1612), Jacob Handl-Gallus (1550-1591), Andrea Gabrieli (1510/20-1586), Giovanni Gabrieli (1553/56-1612/13), Melchior Vulpius (ca. 1570-1615) and Hieronymus Praetorius (1560-1629). The largest group of cori spezzati compositions is represented by double-choir music of Giovanni Gabrieli from his Sacrae symphoniae (1597). A new impulse for the development of musical life and also for the dissemination of polychoral music in Spiš can be observed in the 1610s, i.e. in the period following the year 1611, when Mikołaj Zieleński published in Venice his Offertoria totius anni writ- ten in the cori spezzati style. For the musical cantorships in Spiš the years 1610-1614 belonged to the more favourable period of their development, representing the era of consolidation of the Evangelical Church in the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy. The first Synod of the Church took place in 1610 in Žilina (Sillein, Zsolna), the next one in 1614 in Spišské Podhradie. The Synod constituted an outstanding event from the musical point of view, too. In that year the municipality of Spišské Podhradie procured a new tower clock for the cathedral, as well as a new organ. The archive sources tell us that on the first day of the Synod organised at the Town Hall, the hymn Veni Sancte Spiritus was performed.4 From 1610 on, the municipality of Levoča also increased its support for the musical life in the town. The position of organist in the Evangelical Church of Saint James was taken by Johann Miska, who had earlier worked in Poland and in Bardejov (Bartfeld, Bártfa). Miska developed an active cooperation with Caspar Stein, the cantor of the municipal Latin school, and with Johann Minoris, its new rector. Minoris was known as a patron of music: he established a fund with a capital of 100 Guilders. The fund sup- ported, among other things, organ teaching.5 The organ of Saint James was rebuilt after 1615, and at the same time, the municipality invested a considerable amount of money also into purchasing musical prints. In 1614, the municipality of Levoča bought Orlando de Lasso’s Magnum opus musi- cum, containing a classical repertoire of late Renaissance polyphony and eight-voice Renaissance music in Slovakia (the 16th century)], «Slovenská hudba», xxiv/3, 1998, pp. 264-308; PeTőczová, Polychorická hudba II, pp. 42-43. 4 Borislav PeTrík - PeTer ryBár and team, Evanjelická encyklopédia Slovenska [Evangelical Encyclopedia of Slovakia], Bratislava, BoPo, 2001; Kronika mesta Spišské Podhradie slovom i obrazom [Chronicle of Spišské Podhradie by words and pictures], ed. František Žifčák, Spišské Podhradie, Mestský úrad, 1999, p. 28. 5 franTiŠek maTúŠ, Tabulatúrny zborník Samuela Marckfelnera [Tablature book of Samuel Marckfelner] (Stará hudba na Slovensku, 4), Bratislava, Opus, 1981, p. 5. – 366 – CORI SPEZZATI IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY Spiš cori spezzati compositions for two separated choirs. The oldest prints containing early Baroque polyphony of German composers were preserved in the Levoča Music Collection from the years 1602-1620; the prints include the Magnificat octo vocum and Cantiones sacrae of Hieronymus Praetorius, the Psalmen Davids (SWV 22-47) of Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) and the Cantiones sacrae octo vocum of Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654).6 An import ant event, with the involvement of solemn music, was the celebration of the cen- tenary of the Reformation in Levoča (29 November 1617). The hymn Te Deum laudamus was sung at this celebration: «Nach vollbrachter Jubel Predigt hatt mann das Te Deum laudamus gesungen […] vnd dieszen actum mit einer schonen Music geschlossen»7; it might have been a polychoral performance. We are able to track particular music repertoire in the Protestant cantorships of Spiš from the 1630s onwards. It was in those years that the tablature books SK-Le 3A (olim 13992) a SK-Le 4A (olim 13993) began to be compiled. The books contain almost 400 compositions, including ca. 200 polychoral pieces. They were recorded during the dec- ade 1635-1645 in the Spiš towns of Spišské Podhradie, Smolník, Ľubica and in other towns with a dominant German-speaking population like Banská Štiavnica (Schemnitz) and Nitrianske Pravno (Teuto Prona). The tablature book SK-Le 4A contains almost a complete copy of pieces from the Psalmen Davids of Heinrich Schütz and the Cantiones sacrae of Samuel Scheidt; moreover – as mentioned above – original prints were also preserved in Levoča. The printed partbooks of the Psalmen Davids contain manuscript appendices of an extraordinary value, attached to each of the printed part books in SK-Le 26A (olim 5161). These manuscripts contain polychoral works by European composers – Heinrich Schütz, Melchior Vulpius, Hieronymus Praetorius, Asprilio Pacelli (1570-1623) (cf. figure 1), Matthäus Apelles von Löwenstern (1594-1648), Giovanni Gabrieli, Luca Marenzio (1553/54-1599), Daniel Selich (1581-1626) – as well as some unique works by a composer living in Spiš, Johann Schimrack (†1657, Ján Šimrák in Slovak), organist in Spišské Podhradie from 1630-1657 (figure 2). Johann Schimrack was one of the most outstanding composers of the first half of the 17th century active within the territory of the