ReciClassíCat: BRENTNER, Jan Josef Ignác (1689-1742)

dimecres, 4 de novembre del 2015

BRENTNER, Jan Josef Ignác (1689-1742) - Offertoria solenniora op.2

Obra de Pierre Subleyras (1699-1749), pintor francès (1)

- Recordatori de Jan Josef Ignác Brentner -

En el dia de la celebració del seu 326è aniversari de naixement

Parlem de Pintura...

Pierre Subleyras (Saint-Gilles, 25 de novembre de 1699 - Roma, 28 de maig de 1749) va ser un pintor francès que es va establir permanentment a Roma després de guanyar el Prix de Rome el 1727. Va pintar temes diversos en un estil principalment neoclàssic, incloent retrats i natures mortes, si bé el més destacat van ser els seus quadres religiosos, d'esperit més seriós que la majoria de les obres franceses del període rococó. La seva obra més famosa va ser la Missa de Sant Basili, pintada per a la Basílica de Sant Pere i conservada actualment a Santa Maria degli Angeli. Aquest enorme quadre va ser molt celebrat quan es va exposar el 1748. L'any següent va morir a Roma. Posteriorment va ser oblidat, però una important exposició de la seva obra a París i Roma del 1987 va contribuir a restablir la seva reputació com a un dels més destacats pintors francesos de la seva època.

Font: En català: No disponible - En castellano: Pierre Subleyras (1699-1749) - In english: Pierre Subleyras (1699-1749) - Altres: Pierre Subleyras (1699-1749)

Parlem de Música...

Jan Josef Ignác Brentner (Dobřany, 3 de novembre de 1689 - Dobřany, 28 de juny de 1742) va ser un compositor bohemi. El seu pare va ser l'alcalde de Dobřany. Entre els anys 1717 i 1720 va viure a Praga on va publicar la majoria de les seves obres. Allà va entrar en contacte i col·laboració amb la germandat religiosa de St Nicholas de Praga per a qui va escriure diversos motets. El seu famós Offertoria solenniora op.2 el va dedicar al seu patró i mecenes Raymund Wilfert, l'abat del Monestir de l'Ordre dels Premonstratencs a Teplá. Si bé la majoria de les seves obres s'han perdut, el seu nom va ser molt conegut al seu temps ja que algunes de les seves composicions s'han localitzat a Sud-Amèrica. Va morir a Dobřany el juny de 1742.

OBRA:

Printed works published in Prague

Vocal religiosa:

Harmonica duodecatometria ecclesiastica seu [12] Ariae, op.1 (1717)
[6] Offertoria solenniora, SATB, 2 vn, org, op.2 (1717)
Hymnodia divina [12 arias], S, 2 vn, va, org (before 1725) [?same as op.1]
Horae pomeridianae seu [6] Concertus cammerales, vn/ob/fl, va, vc, op.4 (1720)
Laudes matutinae (n.d.), lost, cited in Dlabacž
At least 16 Motetta pro defunctis, SATB, 2 vn, org, most lost;
4 autograph in CZ-Pnm [Himmels Sonne;
Jesu, du mein treuer Hirt;
O Jesu mein;
Sag an, was ist diese Welt] all ed. in EDM, 2nd ser., Sudetenland, Böhmen und Mähren, iv (1943)
Offertories, motets, vespers, psalms, litanies, responsories in A-GÖ, Wgm, CZ-Bm, ME, Pnm, Pak, Prague Cathedral, Loreto Church, Prague, see Stefan and Pulkert;
lost sacred works listed in inventories of Kosmonosy Piarist College, 1712–, Osek Monastery, 1720, and Rajhrad Monastery, 1725: see Culka and Straková

Doubtful works:
Pastorella, G, 2 vn, va, org, 1730, A-Wgm, new score CZ-Pnm;
Partita, F, 2 ob, tpt, va d’amore, db, D-Dl, new score CZ-Pnm;
Partita, F, va d’amore, ob, hn, vn, b, lost, cited in Breitkopf catalogue;
Partita, G, lute, ob, 2 vn, b, lost, cited in Breitkopf catalogue

Font: En català: No disponible - En castellano: No disponible - In english: Jan Josef Ignác Brentner (1689-1742) - Altres: Jan Josef Ignác Brentner (1689-1742)

Parlem en veu pròpia o en veu d'altri...

We usually find our way about the history of European classical music by the names of composers. Although music in itself is what matters here, it is the names of the music makers that help us to avoid getting lost in the immense multitude of compositions, and it is the composers´ life stories that help us to write the history of music. Untile recently, though, the name of Jan Josef Ignác Brentner rang a bell in the minds of but a few. We know next to nothing about his life, and his position in the history of Czech music has been recognised – or as Czech historian Dušan Třeštík would put it – „invented“ since not very long ago. It was in particular Emilián Trolda who had a lion´s share in the rediscovery of Brentner´s music by retrieving, in the middle of the 20th century, most of the composer´s then available works, and by finding the basic facts about his origin. However, even afterwards, Brentner remained for decades off the limelight of Czech musicological interest with its ethnic preferences and concern about Czech musicians abroad. With respect to his name and birthplace, Brentner was believed to belong among Bohemian Germans because in his time it was the regional affiliation (he may well have been referred to as „Bohemian“) rather than the native language that mattered more and that, in this case, we know nothing about anyway. Much the same applies to sacred music, the bulk of Brentner´s preserved work – for a variety of reasons, the whole extensive and poorly explorable repertoire of Baroque religious music was long left unexplored by music researchers and musicians alike.

Jan Josef Ignác Brentner was born in 1689 at the village of Dobřany near Plzeň (Pilsen, western Bohemia), and died at the same place in 1742, a bachelor and „praeclarus componista“. What happened in between is more or less guesswork. He did spend at least some time in the Lesser Town of Prague, composing concertos for the Count Thun music ensemble, obviously working also for Lesser Town Jesuits, and for the Order of the Cross choir. Nevertheless, his preserved compositions are the only solid evidence of Brentner´s existence. Four collections of these were published in Prague in the years 1716-1720. Style-wise, they show discernible Italian inspiration coming, for instance, from the then very popular music by Vivaldi. The medium, too, was similar; Italian concertos and sonatas in those times often spread in German-speaking lands in the form of printed collections. The sacred music preponderance over instrumental music is, within the context of contemporary prints, entirely characteristic of the domestic, or broadly speaking, south-German-Bohemian-Austrian surroundings. Instead of the usual collection of trio sonatas, Brentner chose for his first printed opus a set of arias on spiritual texts; also his two other collections were devoted to sacred music, while only the fourth one contained instrumental concertos. In those days, arias represented a very popular and musically progressive segment of church music. Beside Brentner, other authors from Bohemia such as Josef Leopold Václav Dukát or Josef Antonín Plánický also published or intended to publish similar collections.

This popularity, however, already heralded the coming preference for retexted operatic arias used, as a rule, as the musical climax of the Mass at the point of offertory, a fashion to break out in full soon afterwards, coinciding with the decline of the original production of this sort. The arias in this particular recording come from Hymnodia divina, a collection which was published as Brentner´s opus No. 3 in 1718 or 1719 and which was long mistaken for a similarly conceived first collection by the same composer. Notably enough, its contains more texts already set to music before: thus, the offertory Gloria et honore had been published as a choral concerto movement in his collection Offertoria solenniora opus No. 2. Another aria on the text Oderit me totus mundus had again been put out in his above-mentioned first collection. Most of these are arias da capo except the one entitled Domine, non sum dignus with oboe solo, the text of which impressively paraphrases the centurion´s liturgical confession („“Lord I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, ... „, here, however, : „ ... that you should come into my heart ...“). The collection typically ends in a funeral aria Parce mihi, Domine, a musical setting of selected verses from the Old Testament Book of Job, also a part of the Office of the Dead. In Baroque times, figural music accompanied not only the Mass but, in some cases, also selected parts of the office or liturgy of the hours, mainly vespers. As a rule, psalms and Magnificat were performed to instrumental or figural accompaniment, and it was exactly such sets of compositions that were mostly preserved in the collections, apart from separate psalms set to music.

Vespers in this recording are rendered in the form, in which they were found in the Wroclaw church of the Holy Cross where they were scored by the above-mentioned Emilián Trolda. In their time, they were obviously a very popular and widely acclaimed kind of music. Such vespers or their parts in combination with Brentner´s other psalms or with different Dixit Dominus and Magnificat remained preserved at a number of places in Bohemia and also, for example, in Dresden. As often happens in sacred music of the period, some of the preserved sources were seen as anonymous, and, indeed, some of the copies were attributed to other authors – thus, some of the psalms were heard from the choir of St. Vitus Cathedral as music by Francesco Durante, in the town of Osek again as works by Václav Gunther Jacob, at the Knights of the Cross church in Prague as Brentner´s compositions, and in Dresden as music „senza nome dell`Authore“. Since some of the sources are inaccessible, we are hard put to reliably corroborate Brentner´s authorship, the most often mentioned alternative, though judged by the music as such it appears to be very likely, indeed. Despite the use of clarino trumpets in most of the parts, these are mostly compositions of modest extent. In some cases (Beatus vir) only parts of the psalm texts are set to music, sometimes merely one fully composed movement as distinct from the „one verse - one separate item of music“ mode, a customary feature of truly solemn compositions. All the same, the composition does have the desired effect, and its is easy to understand why it was so popular in its day.

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