Zdeněk Gintl’s O starých českých muzikantech (1946) and the Reconstruction of Jan Dismas Zelenka’s Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Prague

Abstract

The enormous shifts in Europe’s political landscape in the early twentieth century accompanied a reconstruction of the identity of Dresden-based Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745) and a reassessment of the value of his music in Prague. Characterizations of Zelenka in contemporary literature, and particularly in a book apparently intended for children by Zdeněk Gintl, published in Prague in 1946 (ten years after the author had died), show that Zelenka’s identity had been reconstructed such that it could embody Czech frustrations towards the German influence over Czech culture and affairs. This article examines Gintl’s representation of Zelenka as a sorrowful and frustrated man, diligently working in exile at the Catholic court church of Dresden, with a deep longing in his heart to return to his Bohemian homeland, which had been depleted by centuries of Habsburg oppression. Furthermore, it explores how, in accordance with early twentieth-century Czech nationalist interpretations of Czech music history, Gintl represents Zelenka’s compositional practice as having been not in the service of religion but, rather, as a revolutionary activity whose aim was to preserve the continuity of Czech national culture, despite the fact Zelenka was a Catholic whose music was almost exclusively intended for the liturgy. Accordingly, Gintl elevates the status of certain works in Zelenka’s output—namely, his melodrama Sub olea pacis (ZWV 175), his only Czech-texted motet Chvalte Boha silného (ZWV 165), and his instrumental music—as other Prague writers had also done. However, further investigation is needed since this reconfiguration of the hierarchy of value in Zelenka’s oeuvre was inherently fraught, and it is likely to have had meaningful implications for Zelenka reception in the highly atheistic societies of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic.