# Newly Rediscovered Musical Genius - JD Zelenka (1679-1745)



## robert newman (Oct 4, 2006)

Among the most amazing musical rediscoveries of recent years has been the wonderful music of Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745). Zelenka was a contemporary of JS Bach and served for many years as Kapellmeister in Dresden, Germany. In fact, Bach is known to have greatly admired Zelenka. It's easy to see why.

If you've not heard any of Zelenka's music (most of which has only been recorded for the first time in recent years) I highly recomnend you do so. He was a master of counterpoint and some of his works are surely equal to those of Bach himself.

There are now several specialist online sites devoted to Zelenka including -

http://www.jdzelenka.net


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## Handel (Apr 18, 2007)

I think it is great to "discover" some great talents who were unjustly forgotten. Guys lile Zelenka, Graupner and Heinichen composed real good music.


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## robert newman (Oct 4, 2006)

Hi there Handel, 

I know nothing of Graupner - have you any recommendations of works by him ?
Thanks


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## Don (May 15, 2007)

I first became familiar with Zelenka's music in the mid 1980's through a wonderful Claves CD of his Requiem in C minor conducted by Jorg Ewald Dahler. I now have about 10 Zelenka recordings and consider him an outstanding Baroque composer. Many folks see the Baroque era as being led by the trio of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi; for me, Zelenka easily eclipses the Red Priest.


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## Don (May 15, 2007)

robert newman said:


> Hi there Handel,
> 
> I know nothing of Graupner - have you any recommendations of works by him ?
> Thanks


I can recommend the five volumes of keyboard partitas on Analekta played by Ms. Soly. However, I don't find Graupner as compelling as Zelenka.


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## robert newman (Oct 4, 2006)

Don, thanks very much. Yes, I was really amazed by Zelenka's music. The opening bars of the very first piece I heard (which was a Miserere) surprised me ! Same as you, I've got around 10 works of his now.

I will make a point of trying to hear the Graupner recording that you recommend. Thanks for this.


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## Mark Harwood (Mar 5, 2007)

Having just heard my first recordings of Zelenka's orchestral music, I can't yet say whether I'll come to enjoy it even more than that of Telemann, but first impressions are most favourable. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into it. It's a shame that this was only a small part of his enormous output, but what there is is a treat.


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

Zelenka's extraordinary. Much was thought destroyed by British Bomber Command in the Dresden firestorm of 1945 but manuscripts keep surfacing in Russian libraries. He's libeled on the internet, accused of 'bitterness' but the truth is (a) there's no evidence for that and (b) so little is known about him it's impossible to say even what he looked like -- there's no known portrait -- let alone his emotional state. CPE Bach reports his father thought highly of him -- JS and Zelenka almost certainly knew each other, but Zelenka was a Catholic - a persecuted minority at the time -- so JS probably had to be careful. The Czechs are very proud of him and there's something of a Zelenka renaissance in Prague and (as mentioned above) there's the wonderful Zelenka site and forum -- packed with international scholars, enthusiasts and top players. A demo recording and score of one of his Z181 trios is here.


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

HA! For a moment, I thought that Mr. N had returned.


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

opus67 said:


> HA! For a moment, I thought that Mr. N had returned.


Who or what is Mr N and why should the possibility of his return send shivers running up and down the Opus spine? Is he a bad boy?


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## Andy Loochazee (Aug 2, 2007)

purple99 said:


> Who or what is Mr N and why should the possibility of his return send shivers running up and down the Opus spine? Is he a bad boy?


You mean you have never heard of Mr N (aka Robert Newman)? This is absolutely astonishing. He was one of the most prolific members of this Forum until his ban last year, and is a very well known character on classical music forums. He's been banned from more Forums than Mozart wrote piano concertos.

Newman was involved in many threads here. He is the guy who reckons that Mozart was a big fraud and all the music attributed to him was written by other composers, the whole thing engineered by the powers that be (mainly an alleged crooked Jesuit Order), and (so he alleges) that the myth has been perpetuated ever since by an army of ignorant musicologists, etc. You have only to go back the opening thread here, and follow it from there. At one time, virtually 95% of all posts involved Newman, as he spewed out tons of this guff and met with resistance of one kind or another from other members. Things often got heated with some members who have also left or been banned.

After his ban from here, Newman kept returning under several aliases. He is quite infamous for this, and has done the same thing on several other Forums. His writing style is easily spotted, so he gets caught out quickly. These days he concentrates on Corkin's "Mayhem" site, where he's been writing reams on the subject of the Le Nozze, which he alleges was first written by another composer, and that Mozart merely tweaked it. Very curiously, since they won't allow Newman on the MozartForum (he was banned from there ages ago), several Mozart experts have joined Mayhem purely in order to challenge him there.


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

purple99 said:


> Who or what is Mr N and why should the possibility of his return send shivers running up and down the Opus spine? Is he a bad boy?


Who said anything about shivers?

Oh and, if you don't know already, Andy is his arch-nemesis. 

Andy, purple99 is relatively new to the forum.


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

Andy Loochazee said:


> You mean you have never heard of Mr N (aka Robert Newman)? This is absolutely astonishing. He was one of the most prolific members of this Forum until his ban last year, and is a very well known character on classical music forums. He's been banned from more Forums than Mozart wrote piano concertos.
> 
> Newman was involved in many threads here. He is the guy who reckons that Mozart was a big fraud and all the music attributed to him was written by other composers, the whole thing engineered by the powers that be (mainly an alleged crooked Jesuit Order), and (so he alleges) that the myth has been perpetuated ever since by an army of ignorant musicologists, etc. You have only to go back the opening thread here, and follow it from there. At one time, virtually 95% of all posts involved Newman, as he spewed out tons of this guff and met with resistance of one kind or another from other members. Things often got heated with some members who have also left or been banned.
> 
> After his ban from here, Newman kept returning under several aliases. He is quite infamous for this, and has done the same thing on several other Forums. His writing style is easily spotted, so he gets caught out quickly. These days he concentrates on Corkin's "Mayhem" site, where he's been writing reams on the subject of the Le Nozze, which he alleges was first written by another composer, and that Mozart merely tweaked it. Very curiously, since they won't allow Newman on the MozartForum (he was banned from there ages ago), several Mozart experts have joined Mayhem purely in order to challenge him there.


Thanks Andy.  As Opus says, I'm relatively new, and am also bad at digging up old threads -- it's like reading tatty old newspapers and who wants to do that? Thanks for taking the trouble to explain. Robert Newman sounds fun -- a sort of 9/11 conspiracy theorist but fixated on Mozart as opposed to the CIA. I can see feathers might fly.



Andy Loochazee said:


> they won't allow Newman on the MozartForum (he was banned from there ages ago)


I'm not a member but have heard they've an itchy ban finger. lozl. These tribal internet wars are a hoot, especially when centered round young Farty Wolfgang. I bet he'd chortle.



opus67 said:


> Who said anything about shivers?


I did.  You seemed a touch paranoid that's all.    If Mr Newman reads this board -- his nose pressed pathetically against the glass -- that must make him laugh. Any chance of him being let back on, or is he cast forever into the Stygian darkness?


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

Andy Loochazee said:


> You mean you have never heard of Robert Newman? He is the guy who reckons that Mozart was a big fraud and all the music attributed to him was written by other composers.


Not only Mozart - Newman claims that Joseph Haydn was a big fraud too.


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## Andy Loochazee (Aug 2, 2007)

jhar26 said:


> Not only Mozart - Newman claims that Joseph Haydn was a big fraud too.


Yes indeed but it's Mozart he mainly guns for. He has even suggested that some early works of Beethoven are wrongly attributed, although not as a result of fraud. Newman's bold, assertive style with nothing but slippery responses and highly circumstantial evidence was well attested in various threads here starting around October 2006. Perhaps his most ludicrous assertions were that Luchesi composed many of Mozart's famous symphonies, and that a highly obscure blind pianist (Maria Paradis?) composed all the famous late Piano Concertos attributed to Mozart. Newman even got into cahoots with another regular internet nutter who reckons that Mozart faked his death and returned years later to re-marry Constanze. I'm not sure if the relevant thread pertaining to the latter survived the Mod onslaught of "Newmanry" that took place here a while back. If you want to check it out it will keep you busy for days, but remember that much of it was excised because the debates got out of hand at times. Those at CMM are but pale imitations. Several of my posts were deleted.


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

Andy Loochazee said:


> remember that much of it was excised because the debates got out of hand


That's the problem with checking old controversial threads -- you never know if you're reading what was written or a bowdlerized version.


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

Andy Loochazee said:


> Yes indeed but it's Mozart he mainly guns for. He has even suggested that some early works of Beethoven are wrongly attributed, although not as a result of fraud. Newman's bold, assertive style with nothing but slippery responses and highly circumstantial evidence was well attested in various threads here starting around October 2006. Perhaps his most ludicrous assertions were that Luchesi composed many of Mozart's famous symphonies, and that a highly obscure blind pianist (Maria Paradis?) composed all the famous late Piano Concertos attributed to Mozart.


And some were composed by his sister Nannerl as well if I remember correctly. And his violin concertos were composed by Myslivececk.



> Newman even got into cahoots with another regular internet nutter who reckons that Mozart faked his death and returned years later to re-marry Constanze.


In fact - I saw Wolfgang and Stanzy at the grocery store last week. They were in the company of Elvis.



> I'm not sure if the relevant thread pertaining to the latter survived the Mod onslaught of "Newmanry" that took place here a while back. If you want to check it out it will keep you busy for days, but remember that much of it was excised because the debates got out of hand at times. Those at CMM are but pale imitations. Several of my posts were deleted.


I've read some of Mr.Newman's posts over here and at CMM. I don't have the stamina or courage to read all of them though.


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

I hear Zelenka is supposed to have been a great composer.

Hey, I started it...thought I'd finish it off, as well.


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

opus67 said:


> I hear Zelenka is supposed to have been a great composer.


I'm sure he was since he's the real composer of the works credited to JS Bach.


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## Mark Harwood (Mar 5, 2007)

OK guys, we've done Mr. Newman's peccadillos. Now let's get back to his point here: Zelenka's music deserves a listen. Buy CPO 999 897-2, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Complete Orchestral Works, and luxuriate in the glory of Baroque.


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

Mark Harwood said:


> OK guys, we've done Mr. Newman's peccadillos. Now let's get back to his point here: Zelenka's music deserves a listen. Buy CPO 999 897-2, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Complete Orchestral Works, and luxuriate in the glory of Baroque.


Well, I expect a three cd box set of his orchestral works in my mail at the end of the week. Jurgen Sonnentheil conducts.


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## Mark Harwood (Mar 5, 2007)

Good move, jhar26. I'm confident that you won't be sorry. It's delightful stuff.


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## BuddhaBandit (Dec 31, 2007)

Hey! I might get that one too... it's pretty cheap for 3CDs... and CPO is usually pretty pricey. I've only heard Zelenka on a classical radio station in Minnesota that specializes in non-canon works and composers. His music, as I recall, sounded like a less intricate but more haunting version of Bach.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2008)

Andy Loochazee said:


> Newman was involved in many threads here. He is the guy who reckons that Mozart was a big fraud and all the music attributed to him was written by other composers,.


He never"to my recollection said *All*


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## purple99 (Apr 8, 2008)

> Last edited by Andante : Today at 00:30. Reason: none at all I did not edit the ruddy thing


OMG it's the ghost of Cardinal Newman tormenting Andante from beyond the grave.


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