ISBN: 978-80-244-4986-9 | DOI: 10.5507/ff.16.24449869

Adam Michna of Otradovice – Composer

Perspectives on seventeenth-century sacred music in Czech lands

Jiří Sehnal

Adam Michna z Otradovic (1600-1676) is an important seventeenth-century Czech composer.  He was born in South Bohemia, in the town of Jindřichův Hradec, which was governed by Count Vilém Slavata. Slavata is known in Czech history as one of the victims of the Prague Defenestration of 1618, considered to be the start of the Thirty Years’ War.  Except for Michna’s dedication of his work Obsequium Marianum, we have no evidence of contacts between Michna and Slavata, probably because Slavata had to spend most of his time outside of Jindřichův Hradec.   The life of Adam Michna can be described on the basis of the entire cultural and political situation of seventeenth-century Bohemia. Michna acquired his earliest education from 1611 to 1617 at the Jesuit school in his home town.  He apparently obtained further musical training between 1618 and 1628 at an unknown location, where he became friends with Nikolaus Reiter of Hornberg.  Reiter was later an adjutant to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. From 1628 until his death, Michna occupied the position of organist in Jindřichův Hradec; meanwhile, his success as a wine merchant enabled him to amass a substantial fortune that may have enabled him to issue prints of his compositions at his own expense.  His music is written in two styles:  Czech spiritual songs for 4 to 5 voices in homophonic arrangements, and Latin liturgical compositions for solo voices, choir, and various musical instruments.     Michna issued his Czech compositions in three collections: (Praha 1647, 64 songs), Svatoroční muzika (Praha 1661, 118 songs) and Loutna česká (Praha 1653, 12 songs). The composer wrote the music to his own poetic texts, which are valued as among the gems of Czech baroque poetry.  The songs are outstanding for their unusually graceful melodies and rich modal harmony.  They were intended for choirs in rural churches; some became popular during Michna’s lifetime, were included in spiritual cantionals, and are still sung today.  Loutna česká contains small vocal compositions for private devotions at home.  They are written for two soprano voices and continuo, with ritornellos for obbligato stringed instruments.   Michna’s compositions to Latin texts were intended for mature choirs in cathedrals and minsters.  He composed masses psalms for vespers, litanies, and Marian antiphons.  The prints of these works are: Obsequium Marianum (Wien 1642, surviving as a torso), Officium vespertinum (Praha 1648) and Sacra et Litaniae (Praha 1654). His Missa s. Venceslai and Magnificat have survived in manuscript. The collection Sacra et Litaniae was dedicated to a friend of Michna’s youth, Nikolaus Reiter of Hornberg († 1669), administrator of the Bishop of Olomouc’s estates and a great admirer of music.  Michna’s Latin compositions are generally written for solo voices, four-voice choir, continuo and a choir of stringed instruments or wind instruments (trombones and zinks ad libitum).  Such ensembles of church musicians were very probably available in Czech towns.  The only work that requires two clarino trumpets is Missa s. Venceslai, composed for the cathedral of the diocese of Olomouc which is dedicated to St. Václav (Wenceslas). The style and melodicity of Michna’s Latin compositions are entirely different from that of his Czech hymns.  The composer combines the expressive techniques of the music of his contemporaries with an admirable understanding of rhetorical figures.   The author analyzes both areas of Michna’s oeuvre, and places them into historical context.    Michna’s Czech hymns have no analogy in their own time.  It is more difficult to search for parallels to his Latin compositions, because we cannot even conjecture what music Michna would have known from his own time.  It is likely that Michna knew and performed sacred music by member of the Viennese circle:  Bertali, Dolar, Vinzenz Fux, Sances, perhaps also Pietro Verdina and Georg Kopp of Passau. During his entire life, Michna followed the development of music, and responded to it in his own works.  Adam Michna z Otradovic was, along with the younger Pavel Josef Vejvanovský (1639-1693), the most significant Czech composer of the seventeenth century.  Vejvanovský, as leader of the chapel of the Bishop of Olomouc, composed instrumental as well as sacred music.  But Michna, who still belonged to an older stylistic tradition, composed only music that was purely spiritual.   Jiří Sehnal (born 1931), the author of this book, worked from 1964 to 1994 in the department of music history of the Moravian Provincial Museum in Brno, and lectured in music history at Palacký University in Olomouc from 1995 to 2011.  He is considered to be the leading authority on Czech baroque music.  He has published over 300 scholarly works in Czech and German, and is the editor of the collected edition of the works of Adam Michna.  His book Pavel Vejvanovský and the Kroměříž music collection has been published in English (Olomouc 2008). This monograph on Adam Michna fills out our knowledge of Czech seventeenth-century music.

1. edition, Published: 2016, publisher: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, Křížkovského 8, 771 47 Olomouc