Zelenka’s responses for the three principle days of Holy Week form a self-contained collection with texts taken from the so-called Morning Prayers of the church which are collectively entitled in Latin as Divinum Officium (Divine Office). The Latin term officium means “duty” or “obligation”. From the fourth century AD, it was particularly in diocesan towns and monasteries where the Officium and the Mass became developed into their fixed forms; the monks and clergymen were obligated to recite these texts at specific times of the day. The inspiration for these common and officially codified prayers was Old Testament Judaism. The extensive varied conglomeration of texts with different forms and genres have been collected in volumes evolving over many centuries up to the present day in which the prayers were meticulously ordered according to each single day of the ecclesiastical year. These prayers divide time and fill it, providing it with content and rhythm and transform profane time into sacred time.

What role did the Holy Week Matins play in musical life at the Saxon-Polish court in Dresden? August the Strong’s change of confession in 1697 precluded an inherent tradition of this type of church service; the installation of a Catholic court chapel in a converted opera house (1708) and the establishment of appropriate ecclesiastical music both progressed haltingly despite extensive efforts. During the initial period, the Matins can only have been performed ‘choraliter’ in the form of plainsong. After the marriage of the Saxon crown prince with the Duchess Maria Josepha, the music of the court chapel became more intensively involved in the structure of the church services at court from 1721 onwards. Surprisingly, it was not the court musical director Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729) who received a commission to compose music for the Matins during Holy Week in 1722, but instead the double bass player Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745). 

Zelenka had come to the Saxon court from Prague in 1710 and had then enjoyed the privilege of a study sojourn in Vienna with the imperial court music director Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741) which was financed by the Dresden court. On his return to Dresden, Zelenka initially resumed his former position as double bass player and was increasingly charged to undertake the musical direction of church services alongside the court music director and the “compositeur de la musique italienne”, Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1692- 1753). The invitation to compose music for Matins during Holy Week was probably issued personally by the electress princess Maria Josepha, a descendent of the Hapsburg dynasty, who had been familiar with the corresponding custom at the Vienna court and thereby provided the initial spark igniting the subsequent ecclesiastical musical activity at the Dresden court. Six Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae ZWV 53 were duly produced, but the 27 Responsoria pro hebdomada sancta ZWV 55 which were also begun in 1722 according to the autograph score were not completed until the following year.

Responsoria pro hebdomada sancta are considered one of Zelenka’s most important compositions and they have become synonymous with his masterful command of counterpoint. Zelenka himself apparently considered them highly significant, and his contemporaries retained interest in them even after the composer’s death. Text and music unite so masterfully here that in the realm of Baroque music, it would be difficult to find a parallel for the resulting urgency and emotional depth.