HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

What began as a regional dynastic dispute after the childless Emperor Matthias designated Ferdinand of Styria to be his successor turned into one of the most violent wars in European history. Followers of our ensemble will recall that we performed both the coronation mass of Emperor Matthias from 1612 by Habsburg court composer De Sayve as well as a coronation anthem for Ferdinand of Styria’s son, Ferdinand III., from 1647 by Valentini.

The revolt began in May 1618 when Protestant nobles met with Ferdinand II.’s representatives Vilem Slavata and Jaroslav Borzita at Prague. After their stilted issuance of grievances, they infamously defenestrated them, but the gentlemen miraculously survived the 70-foot fall from the third storey (vide the votive image of angels and Our Lady breaking the lords’ fall). Exactly thirty years of fighting ensued when opportunistic foreign rulers like Cardinal Richelieu and Gustavus Adolphus took advantage of this political crisis and mercilessly ransacked imperial lands while an ambivalent Pope Urban VIII. refused to intervene.

Adam Michna z Otradovic (1600-1676) was a Bohemian composer who dwelt in the town of Jindřichův Hradec, which was ruled by the Slavata family. He dedicated his first opus, the Obsequium Marianum of 1642, to them. While we cannot be certain for whom he wrote his magnificent Missa pro Defunctis, it is possible that it was indeed written for the funeral of Count Vilem Slavata, the selfsame survivor of the 1618 defenestration which had triggered the Thirty Years’ War. He was interred in the Church of S. Mary Magdalen, attached to the Jesuit College of Jindřichův Hradec where Michna worked, on 25 February 1652: four years after the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years’ War and codified the definition of the modern nation-state. The Jesuits would publish Michna’s Requiem at their academic press at Prague in 1654, an unusual distinction which attests to the great esteem that Michna’s music had attained among their Order.

This Requiem is offered in loving memory of Majorie Monica Shook Eggleston and is open to the public.