In the 15th and 16th centuries, Dresden emerged as a powerful political center. An old trading town on the Elbe River in the eastern part of modern-day Germany, near the border with Poland and Czechia, Dresden was the ancestral home of Saxon nobility. A 13th-century stone bridge connected the town to an older Sorbian (Slavic) settlement, called Drezdany by the local inhabitants. Eventually, the newer town took on the same name and gradually supplanted the Slavic population.

Over time, Dresden’s Saxon rulers expanded the footprint of the city and introduced various artistic resources. The most significant was an opera house – the Opernhaus am Taschenberg – built beside the Royal Palace and eventually completed in 1667. At the time, it was among the largest opera houses in Europe, with seating for 2,000 spectators. That fact alone helped attract enterprising musicians, composers, and stage directors from all corners of the continent. In fact, the first opera performed in Dresden was Italian. Over the next 30 years, the import of Italian musicians, singers, and composers continued apace. Thus, even though Amsterdam can truly be called the “Venice of the North” by virtue of its extensive canals, Dresden can claim that designation by virtue of the many Italian musicians who called it home.

Two Saxon rulers largely guided Dresden through the Baroque era, and their decisions – political and cultural – help explain why this capital city became so influential and so deeply connected to Italy. First was Saxon elector Friedrich Augustus I, who also became King of Poland in 1697. He converted to Catholicism to strengthen bonds with the Polish people. Thus, in deference to nearby Protestant centers, Dresden looked to Catholic courts across Europe for guidance on creating a musical culture, both sacred and secular.

With Friedrich’s attention focused on Polish matters, cultural life at Dresden began to stagnate. The original Opernhaus went dark, replaced by a brand-new opera venue, while the old building was converted into a church. Fortunately, the continued presence of foreign musicians helped the situation recover. For instance, Venetian-born maestro Antonio Lotti came to lead opera performances from 1717 to 1719 and shared his Italian performers with the church. In 1720, Handel stopped in Dresden to participate in the wedding between Friedrich’s son and the Austrian princess. During this visit, Handel also worked a series of backroom deals to lure Dresden’s best Italian opera singers (including a certain Faustina Bordoni – more on her in a moment) away to his theaters in London, causing a public scandal and damaging Dresden’s opera scene for some time. Matters eventually stabilized during the musical reign of Johann Adolph Hasse, Dresden’s most important composer and conductor throughout the 18th century.

A second significant development came in 1733 with the succession of Friedrich’s son, crowned Augustus II. While his father was enamored of both French and Italian performers, Friedrich Jr. adored the Italians above all else. (Curiously, J.S. Bach visited Dresden in 1733, dedicated two movements of his recent Mass in B Minor to the new monarch, and was hence honored as an official “court composer” from 1736 until his death – though he remained in Leipzig through those years.)

Musical life in Dresden suffered major blows over the centuries. As a result of Saxony’s defeat by Prussia in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), cultural resources languished as money was channeled to rebuild essential structures, local commerce, and civic and religious institutions. Opera rebounded quite well in the 19th century, but that story must be told another day. Perhaps most devastating of all, Dresden’s Baroque architecture as well as vast amounts of art, sculpture, and musical scores, were decimated in the Allied firebombing in early 1945. To take but one example, nearly all of Heinrich Schütz’s works were lost in the span of three days. Today, however, after decades out from behind the Iron Curtain, Dresden’s musical scene is once again incredibly robust.

Our program begins and ends with Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758), a key figure in the transition between the High Baroque style and the emerging Classical idiom. Fasch was an exact contemporary of Bach, and the two had many things in common. Born near Weimar, Fasch – like Bach – moved into the home of a relative at the age of 12 after the death of his father. It was there that he seems to have received his first musical training. He soon enrolled at St. Thomas’s School in Leipzig (where Bach would later teach), though he was largely self-taught as an instrumentalist. Fasch eventually produced his own works, some of which were played by Teleman’s Collegium Musicum, and he enjoyed a growing reputation as a superlative violinist. He accepted a position in Prague before returning to his final residence in Saxony. Like Telemann, Fasch was invited to apply for the top job at St. Thomas’s in 1722 but withdrew his name from consideration, so the school had to “settle” for Bach.

The vast majority of Fasch’s music has not survived; a large portion of his work, including dozens of secular cantatas, was destroyed during World War II. Evidence suggests that he sought paths forward from the dense polyphony of Bach toward the leaner, melodically driven style of the early Classical era. In the Suite in E Minor, of which we hear the opening movement, the Baroque style still clearly dominates. This is a conventional French Overture in three parts: majestic outer sections that frame a more lively, contrapuntal middle. Similarly, the Sonata in D Minor may feature the Classical string quartet scoring (two violins, viola, and cello), but the retention of harpsichord and continuo shows Fasch with both feet still firmly planted in the Baroque. This traditional sonata da chiesa is decorated with features we have come to love about the Italian style: virtuosic string writing, echo effects, pathos-laden slow movements, and colorful use of harmonic sequences that drive the faster movements along.

As mentioned in previous notes, Heinrich Schütz made several key trips to Venice to study with Giovanni Gabrieli and later with Claudio Monteverdi. Schütz was born on the boundary between Thuringia and Saxony and displayed astounding musical ability in his youth. He became a singer and court organist in Kassel before being allowed a three-year apprenticeship to study with Gabrieli at St. Mark’s in Venice. Upon his return to Germany, he became court music director at Dresden in 1615. While he would continue to travel abroad over the next several decades, he worked tirelessly to develop musical resources in Dresden. Today’s concert features musicians whose careers were aided by foundations Schütz laid between 1615 and 1665.

One of these, organist and composer Matthias Weckmann (ca. 1616-1674), came to study as a chorister in Dresden while still a teenager. Weckmann’s exposure to Italian idioms came directly from Schütz himself. He traveled on several occasions with his teacher, including to Denmark, and began to absorb additional influences. As one of the most accomplished keyboardists of his day, Weckmann eventually left Dresden for a post in Hamburg, the center of a flourishing organ tradition. In Hamburg, his education continued under Jacob Praetorius, himself a student of the great Jan Sweelinck and a seminal figure in the North German School. Most of Weckmann’s original works, including the Toccata in A Minor, stem from his Hamburg period. Like his contemporaries from the North German School, Weckmann’s keyboard works are adaptable, allowing for performances on either organ or harpsichord quite easily because pedal lines are largely absent.

Silvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750) was a German lutenist and composer, likely born in Polish lands. He had the good fortune to be the son of a lute virtuoso. Like Mozart decades later, young Weiss was proudly carted around European courts as a prodigy. Around 1710 he landed in Rome in the retinue of a Polish nobleman. What might have been a brief stay expanded into a life-changing period for Weiss, who married an Italian woman, converted to Catholicism, and got deeply involved with opera productions in The Eternal City. He also visited lute makers and continued composing works for his primary instrument, all while surrounded by the instrumental wonders of Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, and others.

In 1717 Weiss was invited by Friedrich I to perform publicly in Dresden. A year later, he became resident lutenist for Friedrich and would eventually become the highest-paid musical employee at court. Weiss was at the pinnacle of his career in these years, enjoying the collegial support of fellow composers like Pisendel, Quantz, and Hasse. Under Hasse, in fact, Weiss would perform in the opera orchestra on hundreds of occasions within the finest ensemble anywhere in Europe. He met Bach on several occasions when the latter visited Dresden, and Bach’s lute works are clearly influenced by the virtuosity found in Weiss’s many suites.

No discussion of Dresden’s musical heritage would be complete without Johann Adolph Hasse (1699-1783). Hasse was born near Hamburg and died in Venice. Without question, he is the most important composer of opera seria in the 18th century. However, despite enjoying a towering reputation during his lifetime, he was very quickly forgotten after his death. New musical wonders had replaced him – a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for example. Still, the rapid decline of his fame is hard to fathom for someone called “the father of music” by a famous Italian castrato and whose works were performed at royal coronations and weddings from Paris to Vienna.

Hasse traveled extensively in Italy throughout the 1720s, spending a great deal of time in Naples studying her thriving opera culture. The success of his Neapolitan operas brought contact with the city’s leading singers (including Farinelli) and the support of Alessandro Scarlatti, whose authority in Naples’ opera houses carried great sway. In 1730 Hasse visited Venice during Carnival season, presenting his new opera Artaserse to great acclaim. He also married soprano superstar Faustina Bordoni, one of the “rival queens” who helped Handel achieve such success on the London stages. The following year, Hasse became music director in Dresden under the aged Friedrich I; in 1733, under the new Elector Friedrich II, Hasse continued to enjoy lavish royal support. He and his wife spent a great deal of time in Italy, but Hasse also gave numerous opera premieres each season in Dresden, including a revised Artaserse in 1744.

Artaserse is based on a text by Pietro Metastasio, the most illustrious and productive poet of opera libretti. Hasse and Metastasio partnered on a dozen projects over their long friendship. Telling the story of a 5th-century Persian king and son of Xerxes (the Persian who invaded Greece in 480BC), the libretto centers on a coup mounted by Artabanus, Xerxes’ most trusted general, who covets power for himself over the king’s legitimate heirs. The plot is eventually foiled, and young Artaxerxes would rule successfully for the next 40 years. In the opera, “Fra cento affanni” appears very early in Act One. It is sung by Arbace, the best friend of Artaxerxes and son of the treacherous Artabanus. Arbace also happens to be in love with Xerxes’ daughter (i.e., Artaxerxes’ sister) and is blocked in this endeavor by the Great King. The scene opens with Artabanus entering in haste, his sword still dripping with Xerxes’ blood and speaking of his plans for seizing power. Arbace is aghast, seeing his world begin to crumble. In music that is breathless and dazzling, he laments a double anguish – his beloved’s mourning for her father, and the peril in which his own father now stands. Artaserse became an instant success and was staged in Modena, Graz, Warsaw, Milan, and London over the next 50 years. Indeed, many composers (Graun, Vinci, Cimarosa) set the same libretto, and Mozart himself set “Fra cento affanni” as a concert aria in 1770.

Born and educated near Prague, the Bohemian Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745) eventually took positions in Dresden as a string player and music director. He became an expert on the violone, the Baroque cousin of the modern double-bass. As we have mentioned, Dresden boasted the best instrumental ensemble in Europe, and Zelenka composed daring, virtuosic music for its performers. For many years, he assisted Johann David Heinichen, the influential Kappellmeister and opera director at Dresden. However, Heinichen’s health was never strong, so Zelenka gradually assumed more responsibility. He focused primarily on sacred and instrumental music, and his rise occurred around the time Hasse arrived to take charge of opera in 1733. The two men shared duties rather amicably; Zelenka’s continued presence at court helped it thrive during Hasse’s extended travels back and forth to Italy. Still, such was Hasse’s reputation – aided by his famous wife – that the elder man (Zelenka) accepted his position as perennial second-in-command.

The brilliance and confidence in Zelenka’s instrumental writing have helped spark renewed interest in his life and works since the 1960s. As a bass string player himself, Zelenka is always attuned to the lowest parts. His continuo lines are intricate and dynamic, inspiring the treble parts to be even more brilliant. The well-known oboist Heinz Holliger has described Zelenka’s melodic writing as “utopian,” neatly capturing the sense of a man striving for a perfection and originality of sound not widely available at that time.

Zelenka’s Trio Sonata No. 1 in F major for two oboes and continuo begins with a tender, unhurried duet for the oboes; note how the second oboe glides into the texture on a high, sustained F. Zelenka clearly enjoys the opportunity to write close counterpoint between the matching treble parts. The faster second movement continues the pattern of imitation between the solo lines, but with greater rhythmic urgency pushed through from the continuo. Zelenka follows this vigorous romp with a dolorous Larghetto beginning in D minor but which modulates quickly into C minor, B-flat major, G minor, F minor, and other keys. In fact, the most striking feature of the tonal journey is just how often Zelenka sets up a key change only to veer off chromatically at the last moment, creating a sense of continuous forward motion. All of that angst and chromaticism is cast off by the lively Allegro finale, where brilliant solo episodes resurrect once again the familiar Italian concerto design. It is not hard to see why Bach was so enamored of Zelenka’s music – and musical life in Dresden as a whole.

Jason Stell, © 2026