Jakub Jan Ryba

Jakub Jan Ryba was an extremely talented Czech composer, versatile musician, and dynamic teacher and article writer on music in the period of Mozart and Beethoven. Delivered in 1765 in a little village owned by the Benedictine purchase near Klatovy in Bohemia, Ryba was raised steeped in the customs of rural cathedral music-making whilst at exactly the same time keeping up to date with the most recent musical trends. Being a youngster he received musical instructions from his dad and in 1781 he was delivered to study on the Piarist Gymnasium in Prague. In 1786 his dad fell sick in the city of Nepomuk and Jakub still left Prague to be able to help him. In early 1788 he was appointed as an helper, and some months later provided the post of cantor and choirmaster at Rozmital. As you would anticipate with this appointment, almost all his output is definitely chapel music, including several masses and additional liturgical works furthermore to unique devotional items for Xmas and Easter with Czech text messages. Certainly his best-known function may be the so-called Czech Xmas mass of 1796 (“Hej Mistre” [Hail Expert], a narrative series predicated on the Xmas tale, with each section representing area of the Mass). The Czech Xmas mass keeps something of an identical placement to Czechs as Handel’s Messiah will towards the English-speaking globe; it’s been performed in chapels, churches, cathedrals, and choral societies without interruption because the end from the eighteenth hundred years. His following most popular functions are Xmas pastorellas, which Rozmilý slavícku (Enchanting Nightengale) is probably the finest good examples and bears the solid affects of Mozart and Haydn. Therefore effective was Ryba in absorbing the high Viennese design that his gorgeous Mass in E smooth was long regarded as the task of Haydn. Furthermore to his music for the chapel, Ryba composed many concertos, 25 symphonies, and 72 string quartets furthermore to a huge selection of additional chamber items. His attempts also guaranteed that Czech artwork song experienced a parallel using the traditional German lieder in his publication in Prague of 12 Czech tunes with piano in 1800. He was a tireless and dedicated teacher and published a significant treatise on music and in addition translated many essential Greek and Latin functions into Czech. He corresponded numerous important music artists of his amount of time in Prague, Vienna, and Pilsen — the second option producing him an honorary resident. Ryba was something of the restless spirit and frequently in conflict along with his superiors; some possess recommended that he experienced his talents to become above the drudgery of the common schoolmaster and cantor. The mounting professional stresses and long-term personal complications proved an excessive amount of for him and on Apr 8, 1815, he dedicated suicide.