Oratorium Sancti Joannis Nepomuceni Antona Neumanna

Title in English Oratorium Sancti Joannis Nepomuceni by Anton Neumann
Authors

ČERMÁK Marek

Year of publication 2022
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source MUSICOLOGICA OLOMUCENSIA
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Web Musicologica Olomucensia
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.5507/mo.2022.001
Keywords Oratorio; St John of Nepomuk; Anton Neumann; Lambach
Description Anton Neumann was a Czech German-language composer, active mainly in Moravia, Lower Palatinate, Austria and present-day Poland (Brno, Zweibrücken, Kroměříž, Kraków, Vienna, Olomouc). He was also a violin virtuoso and Kapellmeister whose artistic legacy and signifi cance have not yet been suffi ciently discovered and presented. Neumann’s compositions are widely distributed in the music collections of Central and Western Europe. His Oratorium Sancti Joannis Nepomuceni is currently housed in the music archives of the Benedictine monastery in Lambach, where his numerous church and secular compositions have been preserved. Neumann’s setting of a German libretto by an unknown author dates from the 1760s. Th e composer wrote the work in a style that is currently usually referred to as ‘Sturm und Drang’. He renders the text in great detail with a varied palette of aff ects and musical-rhetorical fi gures. Th ese fi gures often belong to the realm of acoustic symbolism. Combined with the contrasting and carefully crafted dynamics, Neumann’s work has a very dramatic eff ect. Th e modern premiere of the work was staged in 2015 in Olomouc. Th e paper presents new information about the composer’s life and artistic career, using the example of his Nepomuk Oratorio to present the peculiarities of his compositional style in the form of comments and musical examples.
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