Life
Zelenka was born in Louňovice pod Blaníkem, a small market town southeast of Prague, in Bohemia as the eldest of the eight children born of Marie Magdalena (née Hájek) and Jiří Zelenka. The name Jan Dismas probably originates from his confirmation. His father was a schoolmaster and organist there; nothing more is known with certainty about Zelenka's early years. He received musical training at the Jesuit college Clementinum in Prague. Zelenka played the violone, the largest and lowest member of the viol family, analogous to the double bass in the violin family of stringed instruments. During his studies in Prague, Zelenka wrote his first compositions, all of them oratorial in character.
It is known that Zelenka had served Baron Hartig, the imperial governor who resided in Prague, before becoming a violone player in the royal orchestra at Dresden in about 1710. His emigration from Bohemia was most likely sudden, the reasons for it are not known and became the subject of some speculation. In some monographs, various personal reasons are alleged to be behind his escape, but the truth remains draped in mystery. His first opus in Dresden was "Missa Sanctae Caeciliae" (c.1711).
Zelenka continued his education in Vienna with the Habsburg Imperial Kapellmeister Johann Joseph Fux beginning in 1715. According to his own account, he spent 18 months in Vienna and was back in Dresden by 1719. Whether or not he ever went to Venice is unclear, but a Saxon court document of 1715 records a royal cash advance for such a journey by Zelenka along with Christian Petzold and Johann Georg Pisendel.
Except for a visit in 1723 to Prague, where Zelenka conducted another opus, he remained in Dresden. Zelenka composed a number of instrumental compositions in Prague, as the autograph of the score of Concerto à 8 concertanti confirms: "six concerti written in a hurry in Prague in 1723".
In Dresden, Zelenka initially assisted the Kapellmeister, Johann David Heinichen, and gradually assumed Heinichen's duties as the latter's health declined. After Heinichen died in 1729, Zelenka applied for the post of Kapellmeister, but the post was given instead (in 1733) to Johann Adolf Hasse, reflecting the court's fashionable interest in opera as opposed to liturgical music. Alternatively, in 1735, Zelenka was given the title of "church composer" - "Compositeur of the Royal Court Capelle" (Johann Sebastian Bach had applied for this title in 1733, and was to receive it as well in 1736.) Zelenka was disappointed by the decision of the court, but, despite this, he worked very hard. We may guess that his social failure might have opened the door to the composer's free creative spirit, allowing him to produce his innovative work with its unique qualities.
Johann Sebastian Bach held Zelenka in high esteem, as evidenced by a letter from Bach's son C. P. E. Bach to Johann Nikolaus Forkel, of 13 January 1775, and Zelenka was a guest at Bach's home in Leipzig. Bach had some of his works copied: e.g. he instructed his son, Wilhelm Friedemann, to copy the Amen from Zelenka's third Magnificat (ZWV 108) for use in Leipzig at St.Thomas's church.
In addition to compositional work, Zelenka was pedagogically active throughout his life and educated a number of prominent musicians of that time, e.g. Johann Joachim Quantz, J. G. Barter or J. G. Rollig. To his closest friends belonged (besides Pisendel) also Georg Philipp Telemann and Sylvius Leopold Weiss.
Zelenka died of dropsy in Dresden on December 23, 1745 and was buried on Christmas Eve. In his final years, he wrote works that were never performed during his lifetime. He never married and had no children; his compositions and musical estate were purchased from his beneficiaries by the Electress of Saxony, Maria Josepha of Austria and after his death were closely guarded (in contrast to his treatment when he was alive) and regarded as the court's possessions. Telemann, together with Pisendel, tried unsuccessfully to publish Zelenka's "Responsoria". He wrote on the 17th of April 1756, with undisguised contempt, that "the complete manuscript will be at the Dresden court, kept under lock and key as something very rare…".
There is no confirmed portrait of Zelenka. One should mention a mirror-image black-and-white copy of the well-known portrait of Fux, which has been passed off as a picture of Zelenka on several respected websites.
Read more about this topic: Jan Dismas Zelenka
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