A Map of Our Special Places
All of us probably have such special spots on the map—places that make us perceive things differently, where the invisible can be ‘heard’ and ‘touched’. The experience of my first visits to the Świdnica Church of Peace came in the early 2000s, before the start of the extensive renovation project. The dust of time still sat on the wooden galleries. It rose up and turned the air visible. It moulded the sunbeams, transformed the splendid polychromes, and turned them into a metaphor. My experience was clearly enhanced by the sense that the place was saturated with history as well as (most prominently?) by art and architecture, which must have felt breathtaking also in the church’s earliest days. It was not immediately that Janitsch’s surname came to be associated with Świdnica in my mind. Still, ever since I read in some encyclopaedia that he had come from that city, I have been looking in the music of that major Berlin school representative for echoes of his early years spent in Lower Silesia. I am convinced that the genius loci of the Church of Peace must have shaped the young Johann Gottlieb. This claim may well be dismissed as a mere conjecture. All the same, such thoughts inspired me to study the composer’s output intensely and to persuade the musicians of Arte dei Suonatori to take up his music. Our newest album is the fruit of this effort.
Johann Gottlieb Janitsch (1708–1763): A native of Świdnica who became one of the most significant musicians of his era.
Janitsch was born in Schweidnitz (now Świdnica) on 19 June 1708, in a period when the city flourished thanks to its crafts and trade. It had swiftly overcome the ravages of the Thirty Years’ War and remained a key urban hub in Lower Silesia (in German Niederschlesien, in Czech – Dolní Slezsko), a region then under the Habsburg rule. Pursuant to the Peace of Westphalia, the Protestant community was allowed to build its own church, albeit only outside the city walls and out of perishable materials. The first service was held in the Świdnica Church of Peace on 24 June 1657, following just ten months of construction work. The resulting edifice is unique on a global scale and has defined the character of the place ever since it was built.
Janitsch’s parents (his father was a marchant and his mother the daughter of a local surgeon) were members of Świdnica’s Protestant congregation. From his earliest childhood, Johann Gottlieb absorbed the atmosphere of that extraordinary place: its spectacular paintings, theatrical sculptures, and the music enhanced by the church’s unique acoustics, performed from the galleries by two excellent organs and an ensemble of voices and instruments. These experiences must have exerted a remarkable influence on the boy. He entered the Latin school operating there. Though the city’s archives preserve no documents from that period, the persons he very likely met as a pupil included great Lutheran song composer Benjamin Schmolck. In his Historisch-kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik, Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg indicates that Janitsch’s musical talent already became evident during his school years in Świdnica. The names of his teachers and the scope of instruction are unknown, but records confirm that the young composer spent some time in Breslau (now Wrocław), under the care of episcopal ensemble members.
In 1729, Janitsch took up law studies at the Brandenburg University of Frankfurt (Oder), which was a major academic centre in that period. Law was a frequent choice among aspiring musicians. The Viadrina was famed for its Collegium Musicum. It was therefore definitely no accident that many of Frederick the Great’s court ensemble musicians had studied there. Janitsch led an ensemble that performed under his direction in front of King Frederick Wilhelm and the royal family. In the same period, he also composed occasional pieces (serenatas, cantatas, and others) for the royalty and for wealthy burghers.
In 1733, directly after his Frankfurt studies, the young musician entered the court service as a secretary to the Prussian minister Franz Wilhelm von Happe in Berlin. Three years later he joined the ensemble maintained by the would-be king Frederick either still in Ruppin or already in Rheinsberg (to which the Crown Prince moved at that time—the precise date of Janitsch’s arrival is unknown). It was in Rheinsberg that Janitsch began to organise the so-called Freitagsakademien, that is, concerts held in the houses of musicians and local aristocrats, during which the latest repertoire was both performed and talked about. Those musical Friday nights must have gained popularity since they continued after the court had moved to Berlin, and the idea was emulated elsewhere. Such may have been the origin of Friday concerts at the philharmonic. Apart from playing the double bass in the princely and later the royal ensemble, Janitsch’s duties included (after his move to Berlin in 1740) supervising the opera choir and preparing the repertoire for the wind ensemble that performed during masked balls. He also composed occasional pieces commissioned from him by royal family members, aristocrats, burghers, various societies and institutions. As the large number of surviving sinfonias and chamber works suggests, he probably provided new music for both the royal ensemble and the Freitagsakademien. Little is unfortunately known about the musician’s private life. Records inform us of a fire at his Rheinsberg house in 1740 and his marriage to Johanna Henriette Eymler (adopted daughter of mayor Albrecht Emil Nicolai) in 1749. Janitsch died in Berlin and was buried on 3 April 1763.
His output remains moderately popular. His most frequently performed pieces are quartets with basso continuo, much praised in his lifetime, featuring three melodic instruments (from among the violin, flute, oboe, oboe d’amore, viola, viola pomposa, bassoon, and cello). They were held up as model of a perfect sense of form and a masterful galant-style counterpoint. As to Janitsch’s sinfonias, concertos, sonatas, and cantatas, they remained to a large extent inaccessible until the turn of the twentieth century, when the Sing-Akademie’s collection including his works (robbed during World War II) was recovered. The oeuvre of this Schweidnitz-born composer represents the Berlin variant of the ‘galant style’ that dominated in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century. In terms of talent and technique, Janitsch was equal to his now better-known colleagues. Some of the above-mentioned quartets may well be considered masterpieces. His other works are likewise definitely worth reviving.
Album: Johann Gottlieb Janitsch “Harpsichord Concertos · Symphonies” – Marcin Świątkiewicz, Arte dei Suonatori, CPO Records.
This is very likely that our recording is the world premiere recording of Janitsch’s both harpsichord concertos as well as two of his sinfonias. I was hoping to get hold of his other concertos (two lost keyboard works in this genre are listed in recently published JG Janitsch Thematic Catalogue compiled by Klaus Hofmann and Peter Thalheimer), but have so far been unable to locate them. The works presented here are thus his complete keyboard concertos known to date. They are the F Major Concerto, JWV 6:F1, with an anticipation of Mozart’s Lacrimosa (from the Requiem) in the second movement, a quintessential galant-style opening section, and a quasi-minuet in the last one, as well as a concerto in the then rare key of A Flat Major, JWV 6:As1, which features a central D-flat major Siciliana, daring formidable arpeggios in the first movement, and a last section suggestive of a fandango.
As to the sinfonias, choosing just two from among almost thirty at our disposal was by no means easy and we will certainly take up his other ones, not included in this programme, since it is excellent music. The limited performing forces partly determined our choice (we only had a string ensemble, whereas Janitsch requires horns in many of his sinfonias), as also did our decision to have works in related keys. The Sinfonia in F Major, JWV 7:F6, attracted us with the counterpoint of the second violins in the first movement (which diverges from the unison of the first and second violins typical of that era), the intensified ‘sensibility’ or Empfindsamkeit in movement two, and the somewhat cheeky minuet with which the piece ends. The other Sinfonia in E Flat Major, JWV 7:Es3, captivated us primarily with the through-imitated melody in all the parts, the poetic simplicity of the central movement, and a finale whose musical character and tempo indication (Presto) led to debates as to whether it can still be called a minuet.
Some of our interpretative solutions, such as changes in scoring and dynamics, as well as the ornamentation, are not directly derived from the score. I have decided to perform this programme on a Christian Fuchs copy of a Ruckers harpsichord modernised (the grand ravalement) in the eighteenth century and with added pedal that smoothly switches the four-foot register on and off, which brings this instrument close to models from the second half of the century.
Composers born in the early decades of the eighteenth century are frequently passed over in music history since they fit neither into the Baroque nor the Classicist style, appropriated by Viennese artists. Discovering their music has been our passion and a project we have consistently implemented since our first joint recording—that of Johann Gottfried Müthel’s harpsichord concertos. We are convinced that every contact with the century’s ‘mannerist’ repertoire improves our understanding of their musical language. It is our hope that these interpretations—which we have striven to build upon analogies between music and poetry, seeking inspiration in the sophisticated chiaroscuro of watercolours and the carefully designed ‘wild’ landscape gardens—will find their proper time and place amid all the bustle and excess to which our present age has made us accustomed.
The colour-sublimating dust that gathered for centuries in the Church of Peace is now gone, and the renovated building looks different in the light of LEDs than it did two decades ago. What did it look like in candlelight? Could the details of the paintings then be discerned? And if they could not, why did the artists pay so much attention to them in the first place?
Marcin Świątkiewicz
