Salve Regina

Motet

Pavel Vejvanovský (1633/39-1694)

Ref. no Vej 1 (in 'cantatas')      Price £ 9.50      sample page      cover page      To order: ☞     

Many of Vejvanovský’s earliest compositions – which date from his student days – reveal a provincial composer struggling with the new idioms of modern music. Musical development in the Czech lands had been at a near standstill during the horrors of the Thirty Years War and the pieces that emerge in wake of that terrible conflict reflect the trends of the early 1600s. Nevertheless, he was also able to combine the idioms of Czech music with the Italian style which dominated musical life in Vienna – the main cultural influence on courtly life in Moravia. The most obvious of these early traits is the heavy reliance on alternatim textures, which had been abandoned by most Italian composers by the time of this setting of the Salve Regina. Although stylistically out of date, it is no reason to condemn the piece. Vejvanovský reveals that he posseses a fine melodic and inventive talent. Another typically Czech characteristic in the work is paucity of much genuine imitative counterpoint. Instead the variety comes from the changing textures inherited from the alternatim praxis and the string interludes with attractive dance-like patterns. The piece shows a typical lack of independence in the voices and a propensity for melodic writing dominated by parallel thirds. This technique (so typical of Czech music at the time) combines a strong and unified rhythmic texture with a melodic sweetness of the triadic melody.