The Jesuit educated Czech Catholic composer Jan Dismas Zelenka, sometimes called the “Catholic Bach,”1 is too little known, and we would like to fix that! Worthy to be listed alongside his contemporaries, Bach, Händel, Vivaldi and Telemann, his music presents fine specimens of glorious Baroque counterpoint.
Damian Thompson has an informative and entertaining piece on him in the U.K. Spectator that’s worth reading — complete, though it be, with Thompson’s personal eccentricities. And Robert R. Reilly penned an article on him for Crisis Magazine.
Here, for your Paschaltide edification and enjoyment, is Zelenka’s Missa Paschalis in D major, ZWV 7:
- There is another man known as “The Catholic Bach.” In his case, the title is more literal, since he is Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach. Johann Christian Bach was a convert to Catholicism. ↩
