Jan Dismas Zelenka: Missa Sancti Spiritus

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1723 was a golden year in the musical life of the Dresden Catholic court church. Although regular performances of musical mass settings were introduced in 1721, it appears to have been two years later that the extraordinary flowering of liturgical composition and performance in Dresden seen throughout this decade really began. The court church was administered by Dresden-based Bohemian Jesuits, and their annual letter to Rome for 1723 makes special mention of the influence the music-loving Princess Maria Josepha had on this growth: ‘What is exceptional about our Serene Princess...is that on all Sundays and feast days throughout the year she has given lustre to the royal chapel during the Sung Mass and Vespers by her own and her court’s singular piety. As a further spur and encouragement to this piety, at major feasts the King’s Virtuosi vied in creating delight and exhibiting skill through totally new and exceptionally elegant compositions of Masses and Vespers’. Many of these new pieces were written by the court Kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen (1683–1729) and his deputy, Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745). Several of Zelenka’s most important sacred works were composed in 1723, including his Lamentations pro hebdomada sancta (ZWV 54), the twenty-seven Responsoria (ZWV 55), the Litaniae Xaverianae (ZWV 154), and the mass setting that became the Missa Sancti Spiritus (ZWV 4). His monumental secular melodrama, Sub olea pacis (ZWV 175), written for the coronation of Charles VI, also received its premiere in Prague that year.