Letters from the Morawetz Collection (Musicians of Czech Origin in European Centres at the Turn of the 18th and 19th Centuries)

Jana Vojtěšková

Pages	6–45
DOI	10.37520/muscz.2021.001
Keywords	Richard Morawetz, Friedrich Donebauer, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Jiří Antonín Benda, Leopold Koželuh, Antonín František Bečvařovský, Jan Václav Hugo Voříšek, Breitkopf & Härtel, Václav Jan Tomášek, Franz Xaver Glöggl, Lewis, Houston & Hyde, Johann André, music collection, turn of the 18th and 19th centuries
Citation	VOJTĚŠKOVÁ, Jana. Letters from the Morawetz Collection (Musicians of Czech Origin in European Centres at the Turn of the 18th and 19th Centuries). Musicalia. Journal of the Czech Museum of Music / Časopis Českého muzea hudby . Prague: National Museum, 2021, 13(1-2), 6–45. DOI: https://doi.org/10.37520/muscz.2021.001. ISSN 1803-7828 (Print), 2533-5634 (Online). Also available from: https://www.nm.cz/en/periodicals/musicalia-journal-of-the-czech-museum-of-music-casopis-ceskeho-muzea-hudby/13-1-2/letters-from-the-morawetz-collection-musicians-of-czech-origin-in-european-centres-at-the-turn-of-the-18th-and-19th-centuries

Musicalia. Journal of the Czech Museum of Music / Časopis Českého muzea hudby | 2021/13/1-2

The article deals with the oldest music-related documents from the Morawetz collection (most of which come from the collection of Friedrich Donebauer), which the Czech Museum of Music obtained in 2003 and 2008. Specifically, this involves letters of musicians from Bohemia who were working in German-speaking countries around the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th (Jiří Antonín Benda, Leopold Koželuh, Antonín František Bečvařovský, and Jan Václav Hugo Voříšek). The study presents a critical edition of six letters and one receipt and their translations into Czech and English. On that basis, there is an examination of context within the framework of the lives of the individual musicians and of the period musical milieu. The letters document cultural exchange, tastes, and the stylistic orientation of the period as well as of the music business in Europe at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. Voříšek’s letter documents the period reception of a Mass by Jan Václav Tomášek in Vienna in 1815.

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