Musical life in Slutsk during the years 1733–1760 in the light of archive materials
Loading...
Date
2012
Authors
Advisor
Editor
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM
Title alternative
Abstract
This article represents the very fi rst attempt at reconstructing musical life in Slutsk
(Pol. Słuck) during the fi rst half of the eighteenth century, and it merely outlines the issues involved.
Slutsk was a typical private town – a multicultural centre inhabited by Jews, Orthodox Ruthenians,
Lithuanians and Poles of the Protestant and Roman-Catholic faiths. Among the representatives of
the Roman-Catholic faith, the Jesuits were the main animators of the town’s cultural and educational
life, alongside the court of Prince Hieronim Florian Radziwiłł. A medium-sized music boarding
school attached to the Jesuit College in Slutsk existed from around 1713. Musical instruments were
purchased for the school quite regularly, often in faraway Koenigsberg. The contacts between the
boarding school and the prince’s court were relatively frequent and good, and some school-leavers
found jobs at the court, chiefl y in the garrison or janissary band, and sporadically also in Prince
Radziwiłł’s music ensemble.
The court was the main centre of the town’s cultural life. Among its numerous artistic ventures, stage
shows seem to have been the most spectacular. For the purposes of such performances, a free-standing
theatre was built in the centre of Slutsk at the turn of 1753. This building is worth mentioning because
of the rarity of such projects in the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania during the 1750s. The repertoire
of the Slutsk theatre was initially dominated by commedia dell’arte in German and the occasional
dramma per musica, but during the second half of the 1750s, one-act ballets began to dominate.
Among the instrumental works performed in Slutsk were compositions by Carl Heinrich and Johann
Gottlieb Graun, Georg Christoph Wagenseil, and musicians active at the Radziwiłł court (Andreas Wappler,
Joseph Kohaut and Johannes Battista Hochbrucker), as well as improvisations by Georg Noëlli.
The town’s artistic heyday ended with the death of Prince Hieronim Florian Radziwiłł, in 1760, and
the dissolution of the Society of Jesus, a decade or so later.
Description
Sponsor
Keywords
Slutsk, musical culture, 1733–1760, Hieronim Florian Radziwiłł, Jesuit music boarding school, Jesuit school theatre, aristocratic theatre
Citation
Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology 11, 2012, pp. 235-247