Wroclaw School
The Wroclaw School is a regional tradition of composition that shaped Catholic church music from the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. She was part of the Cecilian movement .
features
The Wroclaw School took in the era of romanticism of pulses Viennese classics in addition to the Silesian folk tunes on. She brought a new harmony and innumerable original melodies into church music, which helped Catholic church music to revive. Linked to this was the abandonment of the Italian music that had dominated the Silesian churches until then, which had moved into the churches from concert halls and opera houses with its playfulness and theatricality, which was perceived as profane and, according to the new feeling, demystified and banalized the liturgy. The Breslau School produced a number of excellent cantors and cathedral musicians at the Breslau Cathedral , most of whom were trained by their predecessors. They created sacred music that was not without esprit, but only accompanied the liturgy and had only this purpose. This music accompanies and underlines the words of the liturgy and colors the mood. Without drowning out the words, she brings out the spoken liturgy. Instrumental music is not banned entirely, but is reduced to an auxiliary function. The reduction in instrumentation was partly due to the church's loss of income due to secularization and was also enforced by the Prussian state power. The technically simple multum singing of the faithful, accompanied by the organ, became the new standard.
In the late 18th century, the Catholic church music of Silesia separated from the concert-style Italian style of Mozart , Joseph Haydn , Luigi Cherubini , Giovanni Gabrielis , Claudio Monteverdis etc. and turned to the more original style of Palestrina . Church music for everyday use should be examined and the theological and political requirements should be taken into account and thus improved.
The cantors of the Breslau cathedral selected the music for use in the cathedral and thereby indirectly determined that of the entire diocese. In addition, they wrote new music for church use and taught hundreds of other church musicians and teachers, who not only spread their ideas in (mainly) Catholic areas of Germany , Bohemia , Austria and Bavaria , but also carried them to Poland and Denmark and spread them there. In this way they had a lasting influence on the life of the then very music-sensitive population.
Representative
Among the representatives of the Breslau School , the cathedral musicians Joseph Ignaz Schnabel , Johann Georg Clement , Bernhard Hahn , Moritz Brosig , Adolph Greulich , Max Filke , Siegfried Cichy and Paul Blaschke should be mentioned. They were all native Silesians.
In addition to their work as cantors and cathedral musicians in Wroclaw , they distinguished themselves through thorough practical and theoretical training, an excellent command of the musical craft and a deep understanding of the tasks of music in the church. In this way they secured a permanent place in church music.
Other well-known musicians who were not employed at the Breslau Cathedral were also influenced by the Breslau School . B. Ignaz Reimann , Johann Franz Otto or Chopin's teacher from Silesia , Joseph Elsner .
Demarcation
The Breslau School was a moderate branch of Cecilianism. In the 19th century, Cecilia societies emerged in many places , which resolutely opposed the use of profane light music and orchestral accompaniment in the church liturgy and demanded the pure choir sound . The first Caecilienverein was founded by Franz Xaver Witt in Bamberg in 1868 . The Catholic music magazine Musica Sacra , which he also founded and which still exists today, became the organ of the movement. In the same year, the Breslau cathedral music director Moritz Brosig and other like-minded colleagues (including B. Kothe and R. Krawutschke) founded their own Cäcilienverein in Opole .
reception
Despite its home in predominantly Protestant Prussia , the Breslau school was spiritually and ideologically connected primarily to the Catholic countries in the south. H. Bohemia , Moravia , Austria and Bavaria . In the beginning it contributed to the significant improvement in the quality of the Catholic liturgy. It brought new and indigenous impulses and melodies, which is why, together with the increased meaning of the word in the liturgy, it improved the bond of German Catholics to their church and the inner cohesion in the time of the Kulturkampf , when the Catholic Church improved with its universal claim was in opposition to German national Protestantism . It contributed indirectly to the democratization of church music by promoting the establishment of amateur choirs .
The Wroclaw School was ideologically conservative and corresponded to the theological tendencies that prevailed in the Catholic Church at the time. In the 20th century, however, it slowed down the development of church music more than it promoted it, thus increasing the distance to the musical avant-garde of the time.
With the end of the Second World War and the loss of their ancestral home, the Breslau school came to an abrupt end. The works created by them are still performed in Poland , Germany and Austria .
literature
- Lothar Hoffmann inheritance law: Music history of Silesia . Laumann, Dülmen 1986, ISBN 3-8288-9775-4 .
- Lothar Hoffmann inheritance law (Ed.): Schlesischens Musiklexikon . Weißner, Augsburg 2001, ISBN 3-89639-242-5 .
Web links
- Pf. Jerzy Kowolik on the development of musical culture in Silesia (Polish)
- Judith Roßbach on M. Brosig
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schlesisches Musiklexikon, pp. 71f
- ^ Judith Roßbach on M. Brosig
- ↑ The history of music in Silesia, pp. 116f
- ↑ Pf. Jerzy Kowolik on the development of musical culture in Silesia ( Memento of the original from June 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ History of Music in Silesia, pp. 118f
