Jan Dismas Zelenka Jan Dismas Zelenka

Jan Dismas Zelenka (baptised Jan Lukáš Zelenka; 16 October 1679 – 23 December 1745), also known as Johann Dismas Zelenka, was a Czech composer and musician of the Baroque period. His music is admired for its harmonic inventiveness and counterpoint.

Musical style

Zelenka's pieces are characterized by very daring compositional structure, with a highly spirited harmonic invention and complex counterpoint. His works are often virtuosic and difficult to perform, but always fresh and surprising, with sudden turns of harmony. In particular, his writing for bass instruments is far more demanding than that of other composers of his era. His instrumental works (the trio sonatas, capricci, and concertos) are exemplary models of his early style (1710s–1720s). The six trio sonatas demand high virtuosity and expressive sensitivity from performers. As Zelenka was himself a violone player, he was known to write fast-moving continuo parts with driving and complicated rhythm.

Zelenka was aware of the music in different regions of Europe. He wrote complex fugues, ornate operatic arias, galant-style dances, baroque recitatives, Palestrina-like chorales, and virtuosic concertos. Zelenka's musical language is closest to Bach's, especially in its richness of contrapuntal harmonies and ingenious usage of fugal themes. Nevertheless, Zelenka's language is idiosyncratic in its unexpected harmonic twists, obsession with chromatic harmonies, huge usage of syncopated and tuplet figures, and unusually long phrases full of varied musical ideas. He is sometimes considered as Bach's Catholic counterpart, in his works.^{[citation needed]}

Zelenka's music is influenced by Czech folk music. In this respect, he continues the tradition of the production of specific Czech national music, initiated by Adam Michna z Otradovic and brought to its culmination later, in works by Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák in the nineteenth century and Leoš Janáček and Bohuslav Martinů in the twentieth century.

In 2013 Damian Thompson wrote of Zelenka, "He belongs to a band of mavericks in musical history whose experiments with harmony seem to catapult them into another generation".