Post Description

dateren van november 2011, payserver?

Johannes Schenck (1660-1712)

Dutch Composer and viol player. It seems that Schenck spent the earlier part of his career in Amsterdam where his compositions included music for a Dutch Singspiel, Bacchus Ceres en Venus, from which songs were published in 1687, as well as works for his own instrument. Enjoying a wide reputation as a performer, in about 1696 he moved to Düsseldorf to the court of the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm, known as Jan Wellem, who ruled there from 1679 until his death in 1716, establishing a court that aimed to rival the artistic magnificence of Versailles. Here Schenck served with a group of musicians drawn from various countries. The court opera, which had been seen in Amsterdam, flourished with, among other operas, Kapellmeister Sebastiano Moratelli's Il fabbro pittore, based on the life of the Netherlands painter Quentin Matsys, which had been staged in the Elector's art gallery in 1695. His successor Johann von Wilderer's La monarchia stabilitia was mounted with singular splendour for the visit to Düsseldorf of Carlos III of Spain in 1703. It was to the Elector that Corelli dedicated his concerti grossi and from Düsseldorf that Handel, who visited the court in 1710 and 1711, was able to recruit the famous castrato Baldassari. Other musicians of distinction connected with the Düsseldorf court included briefly the great lutenist Sylvius Weiss, together with his father and brother, while, in 1715, the violinist-composer Veracini performed there.

Schenck is presumed to have continued in the service of the Elector until the latter's death in 1716. Thereafter the electoral court moved to Mannheim, followed by a number of the Düsseldorf musicians, who formed the nucleus of a musical establishment that was to win its own unchallenged reputation, as the century went on.