Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-08T07:12:21.593Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Gluck and the Czechs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2017

Extract

The Story that Christoph Willibald Gluck was of Czech extraction is an old one and goes back to Gluck himself. The learned librarian of the Premonstratensian Monastery on Strahov hill in Prague, Bohumír Jan Dlabacz, in his Lexicon of Bohemian Artists, which is based for the most part on reliable information, says that Gluck, “the famous reformer of French music,” was born on July 4, 1714, in Weydenwang, Upper Palatinate, not far from the Bohemian frontier; and that “in Bohemia, especially in Prague, he laid the foundations of his musical education. Excelling in his ability to play different instruments, he found, in aristocratic Czech circles, some benefactors who supported him — as he often mentioned — in a lavish way. For this reason everywhere and through all his life he called the Czechs his compatriots and benefactors.” The first biographer of Mozart, František Xaver Nêmeček (Niemetschek) mentions in 1798 that Mozart met Gluck, “a Bohemian by birth” in Vienna. Also in Italy, Gluck was called, like Mysliveček, “il divino Boemo” — “the divine Czech.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1944

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Dlabacz, Gottfried Johann (1758–1820), Allgemeines Mstorisches Künstkrlexicon für Böhmen (Prague, 1815), I, 469 Google Scholar. He learned about Gluck from the scholarly Slavist and writer Václav Fortunat Durych (1735–1802), who in turn received his information from Gluck's widow, whom he met in Vienna.

2 Niemetschek, Fr. X., Leben des K. k. Kappelmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart (Prague, 1798)Google Scholar.

3 From which originates the word robots, now introduced into English from Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots).

4 There are two places of this name in Bohemia; yet in Bavaria there are several more. Therefore, it is uncertain whether Ch. W. Gluck's great-grandmother had come from Bohemia or Bavaria. The first assumption has more probability and is admitted even by German musicologists.

5 There are copies of seven pongs by Gluck for three voices, mainly from the eighteenth century (SIGN. XI. 10), with these titles: “Einem Bach, der Fliesset,” “Schlachtgesang,” “Der Jüngling,” “Die Sommernacht,” “Die frühen Gräber,” “Die Neigung,” “Schönste, dein Reiz.” Further, there is the score and material of the opera Ezio, the first performance of which took place in Prague in 1750; first prints of a Viennese score of Alceste (1769), and of Paride e Elena (1790).

6 This Ferdinand Philip Lobkovic, born in 1724, was evidently Gluck's principal benefactor after the young musician was sent to Vienna for further education by the former's father, Filip Hyacinth. The Duchy of Sagan is in that part of Silesia which Maria Theresa, after the Seven Years War, was obliged to cede to Prussia. As a consequence, the Lobkovics in 1786 sold this duchy to Prussia but, by special decree of Emperor Joseph II, they were permitted to keep the title of “Duke” which was transferred to Roudnice, so that the family was not subject to Prussia but only to the Czech crown.

7 These two documents are quoted by Anton Schmid in the appendix to his Christoph Willibald Gluck (1854, pp. 466–472), yet from them he draws no conclusions as to Gluck's origin. Schmid further states that on the baptismal certificate the composer's name is spelled “Gluck.” But on page 11 he shows that the father used to sign as “Kluckh,” and that in other documents other variations such as “Kluk” and “Kluckh” appear. Later on, according to Schmid, the name was signed “Gluckh” and only at the very end as Gluck (p. 14). In the legend of the parish of VVaidenwang about the composer's baptism—dealt with in the Revue Musical S.I.M. (Paris, 1914) the word is spelled “Gluck” and it seems certain that it is from this document that the composer eventually decided to take the spelling of his name.

8 Julien Tiersot in his study “Les premières operas de Gluck,” Gluckjahrbuch 1913, based on the manuscripts of the Paris Conservatory says that, of eighty-two signatures, twentyfive are spelled “Cluch” (which is the Italian orthography), twenty-three “Cloch” (the corrupted Italian way), two “Cluck,” two “Gluk,” one “Cluk” and twenty-nine “Gluck.” Tiersot expressively remarks that for the time being he avoids any conclusion which might be drawn from this statement. — Don Diego Tufarelli, in a letter of 1752, also spells “il famoso Kluck.”

9 The Czech philologist Jan Gebauer, in his Old Czech Dictionary, Staročtský; Slovnik (Prague, 1904), cites four different ancient meanings of the substantive “kluk”: (1) arrow; (2) boy, lad; (3) flock, tow; (4) plot of land with remnants (flocks) of roots. A certain JeSko de Kluck is mentioned (according to Gebauer) in a document of Bêlá, Bohemia, as early as 1348; in the fourteenth century the same name in the plural (Kluky) is used to mean a spot in the woods (in the Executioners Book of the Lords of Rosenberg, Bohemia, 1348–1409).

10 Ernst Ludwig Gerber, Hislorisch-biographisches Lexicon der Tonkünstler (1790), 514; F. J. Fétis, Biographic universelle des musicians, IV. — In the second edition (1878), Fétis corrects his date according to Schmid.

11 During the war it was confiscated by the German government, together with the other property of the Lobkovic family in Bohemia, because the fact became known that two members of the Lobkovic family were in the service of the Czechoslovak government in exile. The history of the family is described by the former recorder — Dr. Josef Dvorak, in Otto's Encyclopedia (Ottuv Slovník Naučný, XVI, 229 f. [Prague, 1900]). Concerning the Lobkovic castles, see F. B. Mikovec, Malerisch-hisiorische Studien aus Böhtnen— Eisenberg is supposed to be the place described in a wonderfully graphic way in Goethe's romantic phantasy, Die Novelle, as proved by Spiridion Vukadinović in his inaugural dissertation, Prague (about 1910). About those members of the family devoted to music and musicians see also: Alexander W. Thayer's and Richard Vesely's article “Lobkowitz” in Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. m, Third Edition (New York, 1941).

12 In an article published in Komotauer Bote (January 24,1914).

13 It is more likely that he was enabled to pursue such comparatively expensive studies through the bounty of the Lobkovic princes, of which we learn from Dlabacz's reliable quotation of Gluck, confirmed by the above mentioned documents.

14 Ambros-Branberger, Konservotoř hudby v Praze (Prague, 1911), p. 8.

15 Die böhmische Altmeisterschule Czernohorskys und ihr Einfluss auf den Wiener Klassicismus (Leipzig, 1901), p. 44.

16 See Schmid, op. cit., pp. 54 and 62.

17 See Stefan Wortsmann: “Gluck und Bohmen,” Komotauer Anzeiger, Dec. 31, 1913.

18 Národni Listy, Prague, Dec. 15 and 16, 1864.

19 In the Czech folkloristic Review Český Lid (Prague, 1892), p. 359.

20 See Cyril Straka, ed., “Extractus historiarum Joannis Christopher Vogt consistorialis cursoris ab anno 1725–1758,” Hudební Revue, XIII, 217 (on the basis of the Ms. of the Strahov Monastery).

21 See Löwenbach, “Italo-Czech Musical Relations,” Tempo, Lisly Hudební Matice, II (Prague, 1921), 214.

22 See Teubcr, Geschichte des Prager Theatres, I (Prague, 1883), p. 111.

23 From which it is evident that Ezio was not composed as late as 1763, as is usually stated.

24 The main material for this paper was already collected by the writer in Bohemia in 1914 on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Cluck's birth, and was worked up more elaborately in Czech in a broad article in Hudební Revue, VII (1914), No. 10. A small part of its material was used by Camille Mauclair in his essay “A travers la vie de Gluck,” La Revue Musicale S.I.M. (Paris, June, 1914). That article is, however, now used here for the first time in another language, but considerably altered and amended by many new details and documents.

Otherwise, of the older Czech literature on Gluck, the short monography by Otokar Hostinský (Prague, 1879) deserves mention and Richard Veselý's in Hudební Revue VII (1914). In the period when he was still a music critic (1863–1864) B. Smetana never ceased quoting Gluck as an example of dramatic truthfulness. Otherwise Czech literature is weak on Gluck, and his relations with Czech music and musicians were not studied until this writer left Prague in 1939. There is only Vladimir Helfert's study “Die Jesuiten-Kollcgien der Böhmischen Provinz zur Zeit des jungen Gluck,” Festschrift für Johannes Wolf (Berlin, 1929).

25 Max Arend, Gluck (Herlin, 1921), pp. 18 and 19.

26 Ibid, pp.l9, 22f.

27 Einstein, Alfred, Gluck (London, New York, 1936)Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., pp. 1, 5, 7 f.

29 Martin Cooper, Gluck (London, 193S), pp. 38,39.

30 Ibid., p. 77 f. — To that I can only add that the first piece quoted by Cooper is in its rhythm and even in melody an evident double of the old Czech folk dance “Kanafaska.”

31 I cannot assert whether and how far these writers knew anything about my first essay on Gluck, published in 1914. However, as a matter of fact, all their books were published later.

32 See: Ralph Vaughan Williams: National Music (London, New York, Toronto, 1934 — Lectures originally delivered at Hryn Mawr College, Pa.)