The Thematic Catalogue of the Music Collection in the Premonstratensian Monastery in Želiv
Eliška Šedivá
Monday, January 23, 2017
We have received the following publication announcement from Eliška Šedivá (RISM Czech Republic):
Pavla Semerádová and Eliška Šedivá. Catalogus collectionis operum artis musicae de Monasterii Siloensis. Catalogus artis musicae in Bohemia et Moravia cultae. Artis musicae antiquioris catalogorum 9/1-2. Prague: Národní knihovna České republiky, 2016. 2 vols. 660p. ISBN 978-80-7050-664-6.
At the time of its greatest burgeoning in the eighteenth century, musical life in the Czech lands was far from concentrated only in the metropolises. The Czech lands were interwoven with a dense network of monasteries. The monastic choirs were significant rural centres of spiritual and cultural life alongside aristocratic seats and patronage churches.
The Želiv music collection, of which we have a relatively complete overview from 1707 to 1858, predominantly consists of church compositions, 663 compositions, three liturgical books and one set of fragments. The repertoire presents all types of church music, masses or only parts of the mass such as the Kyrie and the Gloria, offertories, litanies, vespers psalms, sequences and hymns. 20 compositions found in the choir in the monastery Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary at Želiv in the 1990s (predominantly symphonies, concertos, works for brass instruments and partitas) buck the uniform trend of the collection’s character. The collection of church works which has arisen as a result of the care of the church choirmasters covers almost the entire liturgical year.
In the eighteenth century, the choirmasters’ practice of acquiring works to perform during the liturgy was common in all monastic choirs, especially in the form of contemporary copies, autographs or printed materials.
The music collection was the first to be catalogued in the Union Music Catalogue of the National Library of the Czech Republic in 1965 and it was placed in the RISM online database in 2014. A further twenty pieces from the choir in the monastery Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary at Želiv were subsequently added and they bear the siglum CZ-ZEL.
The thematic catalogue places an emphasis on providing the greatest possible amount of information about the music collection from the Premonstratensian monastery in Želiv which has long been archived at the National Museum – the Czech Museum of Music (CZ-Pnm). Just like the previous volumes in the series Catalogus artis musicae in Bohemia et Moravia cultae, the catalogue for this collection is also based on the rules for the description of musical documents in the Union Music Catalogue of the National Library of the Czech Republic and the RISM International Inventory of Musical Sources. From the point of view of the systematics and the English terminology, it is subject to the RISM rules which have been adapted to the specific material as necessary.
The catalogue has been divided into three parts: the catalogue arranged by author, the catalogue of anonymous works and collective items. Liturgical books and fragments have been included at the very end. The author catalogue, which is the most expansive, has been arranged in alphabetical order according to the composers’ names. The entries for the individual sources are subsequently listed according to the filing names used (which can include genres, distinctive names, instrumentation and the key signatures). The individual entries not only contain the author header, but also information about the name, a physical description, note incipits and supplementary information (records of sources, notes, concordances, etc.).
An introduction by Pavla Semerádová deals with music at the Želiv Monastery in the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, the music during the liturgy at the Monastery Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, feast days and celebrations in the Želiv Canonry, the grammar school at the Želiv Monastery, the organ at the monastery church and naturally the music collection.
As a supplement to the catalogue, you will find an index of choirmasters, cantors and succentors in the Želiv monastery church in the period from 1663 to 1856, the indexes of alumni musici and copyists, and a complete watermark catalogue. The name index, the indexes of the filing and distinctive titles and texts, and the index of places of publication and publishers are included as well.
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