Johann Wanning

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Johann Wanning (also known as Johannes Wanningus, Wannigk, Wannicke or Wangnick) (1537 – 23 October 1603) was a Dutch composer, kapellmeister and singer who worked for most of his career in the Prussian city of Danzig. He wrote a number of cycles of motets to be performed through the church year, as well as being the composer of the first known musical epithalamium.

Kapellmeister is a German word designating a person in charge of music-making. The word is a compound, consisting of the roots Kapelle and Meister ("master"). The word was originally used to refer to somebody in charge of music in a chapel. However, the term has evolved considerably in its meaning in response to changes in the musical profession.

Prussia state in Central Europe between 1525–1947

Prussia was a historically prominent German state that originated in 1525 with a duchy centred on the region of Prussia on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organised and effective army. Prussia, with its capital in Königsberg and from 1701 in Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany.

In western music, a motet is a mainly vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from the late medieval era to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margaret Bent, "a piece of music in several parts with words" is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the 13th to the late 16th century and beyond. The late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts".

Contents

Life

Little is known about his early years or education. He was born in Kampen in the then Habsburg Netherlands and went to the university at Königsberg in the Duchy of Prussia in 1560. He sang as an alto in the ducal choir and gained a reputation as a composer. A few years later he moved to the port city of Danzig, where he was appointed to the role of kapellmeister at St. Mary's Church. [1] He held the position until his death in 1603, though his health had progressively deteriorated since 1593; in 1599 the composer Nikolaus Zangius took over Wanning's duties, while Wanning himself was given what amounted to a pension of 50 marks paid quarterly. [2]

Kampen, Overijssel City and municipality in Overijssel, Netherlands

Kampen is a city and municipality in the province of Overijssel, Netherlands. A member of the former Hanseatic League, it is located at the lower reaches of the river IJssel.

Habsburg Netherlands Historical region in the Low Countries, 1482–1581

Habsburg Netherlands, also referred to as Flanders during the early modern period, is the collective name of Holy Roman Empire fiefs in the Low Countries held by the House of Habsburg. The rule began in 1482, when after the death of the Valois-Burgundy duke Charles the Bold the Burgundian Netherlands fell to the Habsburg dynasty by the marriage of Charles's daughter Mary of Burgundy to Archduke Maximilian I of Austria. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor was born in the Habsburg Netherlands and made the Low Countries the core of his "empire on which the sun never sets".

Königsberg capital city in Prussia

Königsberg is the name for a former German city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Originally a Sambian or Old Prussian city, it later belonged to the State of the Teutonic Order, the Duchy of Prussia, the Kingdom of Prussia, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany until 1945. After being largely destroyed in World War II by Allied bombing and Soviet forces and annexed by the Soviet Union thereafter, the city was renamed Kaliningrad. Few traces of the former Königsberg remain today.

Musical works

Wanning is today most noted for being "the first Protestant composer to write cycles of de tempore motets for the whole church year," [3] and his work inspired a number of later composers to create similar cycles of Evangelienmotetten or Spruchmotetten. He composed over 100 motets in Latin, published between 1580 and 1590. [1] They were published in two cycles, the first appearing in two parts published in 1580 and 1584 respectively (and republished in 1590) and the latter published in 1590. The first volume, Sacrae Cantiones quinque, sex, septem et octo voces compositae, et tum vivae voces, tum musicis instrumentis aptatae, contains twenty-seven motets for six voices, for saints' days and festivals. A further fifty-two motets are contained in the second volume, Sententiae insigniores quinque, sex et septem voces ex evangeliis dominicalibus excerptae atque modulis musicis ornatae, for from five to seven voices. They were to be sung on days from the first Sunday in Advent through to the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity. They have been described as "lively" by Hans J. Moser, who praises Wanning's expressive power, and Rudolf Eller highlights the motets' solid polyphony, colourful sound, and richness of expression. [4]

Evangelienmotetten or Gospel motets were settings to music of verses from the New Testament. They were selected as an essence or Kernspruch ("text-kernel") of the verses in question, with the intention of highlighting dramatically or summarising in a terse fashion a significant thought from the Gospels.

Advent Christian church season

Advent is a season observed in many Christian churches as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for both the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas and the return of Jesus at the Second Coming. The term is a version of the Latin word meaning "coming". The term "Advent" is also used in Eastern Orthodoxy for the 40-day Nativity Fast, which has practices different from those in the West.

Trinity Sunday calendar date

Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Western Christian liturgical calendar, and the Sunday of Pentecost in Eastern Christianity. Trinity Sunday celebrates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the three Persons of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Wanning was also the author of the first known musical epithalamium – a poem written for a newlywed bride heading to the marital bedchamber for the first time. [5] It consisted of a two-movement work for six voices, probably composed in the 1580s, though only the manuscripts for the tenor and quinta vox parts have survived. [5] It is thought to have been created as a gift for the bride and groom to whom it is dedicated. The groom's father-in-law was a prominent Danzig theologian and rector of the Church of St. Barbara, and was also a music lover whom Wanning is likely to have known through his contacts with the city's social elite. He may have been composed it as a service to a friend. [6] It may not have been his first venture into wedding music, as some of his motets may also have been intended for this purpose. Seven of the twenty-four works in his Sacrae cantiones of 1580 are settings of texts from the Song of Songs and two of the other motets relate to marriage. One of them, A Domino egressa est res ista, may have been written in connection with the wedding in 1579 of Constantin Ferber and Elisabeth Hacken. Ferber was the youngest son of the then Mayor of Danzig, Wanning's patron. [7]

An epithalamium is a poem written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber. This form continued in popularity through the history of the classical world; the Roman poet Catullus wrote a famous epithalamium, which was translated from or at least inspired by a now-lost work of Sappho. According to Origen, Song of Songs might be an epithalamium on the marriage of Solomon with Pharaoh’s daughter.

Tenor is a male voice type in classical music whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The low extreme for tenors is roughly A♭2 (two A♭s below middle C). At the highest extreme, some tenors can sing up to the second F above middle C (F5). The tenor voice type is generally divided into the leggero tenor, lyric tenor, spinto tenor, dramatic tenor, heldentenor, and tenor buffo or spieltenor.

Song of Songs Book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament

The Song of Songs, also Song of Solomon or Canticles, is one of the megillot (scrolls) found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim, and a book of the Old Testament.

He wrote a second epithalamium that was published in 1596 for a bride and groom who were married in Leipzig in Saxony. This may have been commissioned by Georg Knoff, the owner of one of the largest collections of music prints in Europe at that time. Wanning had been on a six-year break in creative activity – by then he was suffering persistent health problems – and the epithalamium was the first work published since his final motet collection, Sacrae cantiones quinque et sex voces, was published in Venice in 1590. It was also the only example in his career as a composer of using a German rather than Latin text, in this case an extract from the Wisdom of Sirach. This was probably due to the preferences of the Leipzigers but may also have reflected the increasing preference among composers of wedding music to use German texts. [8]

Leipzig Place in Saxony, Germany

Leipzig is the most populous city in the federal state of Saxony, Germany. With a population of 581,980 inhabitants as of 2017, it is Germany's tenth most populous city. Leipzig is located about 160 kilometres (99 mi) southwest of Berlin at the confluence of the White Elster, Pleiße and Parthe rivers at the southern end of the North German Plain.

Saxony State in Germany

Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked federal state of Germany, bordering the federal states of Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and its largest city is Leipzig.

List of published works

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References

  1. 1 2 Schwarz, Werner; Kessler, Franz; Scheunchen, Helmut (1990). Musikgeschichte Pommerns, Westpreussens, Ostpreussens und der baltischen Lande. Laumann-Verlag. p. 61. ISBN   978-3-87466-120-1.
  2. ↑ Rauschning, Hermann (1931). Geschichte der Musik und Musikpflege in Danzig: Von den anfängen bis zur Auflösung der Kirchenkapellen. Kommissionsverlag der Danziger Verlags-Gesellschaft M.b.h. (P. Rosenberg). p. 33.
  3. ↑ Hammerschmidt, Andreas (2010). Selections from the Gespräche (1655–56) with capellen. A-R Editions, Inc. p. xxiii. ISBN   978-0-89579-686-8.
  4. ↑ Messerli, Carlos Rudolph; Demantias, Christoph (1974). The Corona harmonica (1610) of Christoph Demantius and the gospel motet tradition. University of Iowa. p. 81.
  5. 1 2 Leszcyzńska, Agnieska (2015). "The first three decades of occasional music in Royal Prussia". In Tenhaef, Peter. Gelegenheitsmusik im Ostseeraum vom 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert. Frank & Timme GmbH. p. 153. ISBN   978-3-7329-0126-5.
  6. ↑ Leszcyzńska, p. 154
  7. ↑ Leszcyzńska, p. 156
  8. ↑ Leszcyzńska, p. 155
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