From the Ground Up: Constructing a Contrabass Section for the Dresden Hofkapelle

Abstract

Modern scholarly interest in Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745) tends to focus on his compositional activities, while an understanding of his contribution as a contrabassist to the Dresden Hofkapelle during his first decade of service to Saxon Elector and King of Poland Augustus the Strong (1670–1733) remains substantially incomplete. This article examines how this second decade of the eighteenth century saw significant change to the Dresden bass section and orchestra as a whole, through a move away from engaging multi-instrumentalists to those specializing on a single instrument, the arrival of a new wave of internationally trained personnel and transition to new instrument types. Archival sources of the Dresden court record many details about individual employment and changes to the Hofkapelle’s size and administration from its reestablishment in 1709 (after being briefly disbanded). Drawing on these primary sources, this article reconstructs aspects of the careers of Zelenka and his colleagues in the contrabass section, and concludes that Zelenka’s activities as a contrabassist in Dresden should be viewed as a key part of a larger plan by the court to modernize the orchestra.