Jan Dismas Zelenka, also known as Johann Dismas Zelenka, was a Czech Baroque composer whose music was notably adventurous with great harmonic invention and mastery of counterpoint.

Zelenka played the violone, the largest and lowest member of the viol family, analogous to the double-bass in the violin family of stringed instruments.

Zelenka was born in Louňovice, a small market town southeast of Prague in what was then Bohemia. His father was a schoolmaster and organist there. Nothing more is known with certainty about Zelenka's early years. It is thought he may have received some musical training in Prague at a Jesuit college named the Clementinum.

It is known that Zelenka served Baron Hartig, the imperial governor resident in Prague before becoming a violone player in the royal orchestra at Dresden in 1710. He studied music in Vienna and Venice in 1715 and 1716. He was back in Dresden by 1719. Except for a visit in 1723 to Prague and an occasional trip, he remained a resident of Dresden until his death.

In Dresden, Zelenka initially assisted the Kapellmeister, Johann David Heinichen, and gradually assumed Heinichen's duties as his health declined. After J.D. Heinichen died in 1729, Zelenka applied for the prestigious post of Kapellmeister. The post went, instead, to Johann Adolf Hasse. In 1735 Zelenka was named a mere church music composer. Zelenka died in Dresden in 1745.

As might be expected, most of Zelenka's compositions were sacred works. They included three oratorios, 12 masses, and numerous other pieces of sacred music. Zelenka's orchestral and vocal pieces are often virtuosic and demanding. In particular, his writing for bass instruments is far more demanding than that of other composers of his era and the "utopian" (as Heinz Holliger describes them) requirements on the oboe playing in his trio sonatas are also notable.

One of J.S. Bach's sons later recalled that: "No master of music was apt to pass through this place (Leipzig) without making my father's acquaintance and letting himself be heard by him." As Christoph Wolff noted in his brilliant biography of J.S. Bach: The Learned Musician, "Guests (of J.S. Bach) included some of the leading figures in contemporary German musical life, among them ... Jan Dismas Zelenka...."

Michael Praetorius was the son of Michael Schultze (Praetorius being a Latinization of the name). At an early age Praetorius attended the University of Frankfurt a. O., his brother supporting him.

When his brother died, Praetorius became organist at Frankfurt and later held the same post at Lüneburg. In this latter town Prätorius began his career as Kapellmeieter. In 1604 he entered the service of the Duke of Brunswick at Wolfenbüttel, first as organist, later as “kapellmeister” and secretary. He was appointed honorary prior of the Ringelheim Monastery near Goslar, but without compulsion to reside there.

Praetorius had become famous as composer of church music, among which should be mentioned the mammoth edition of over twelve hundred songs. He began to write a complete encyclopedia of the art and practice of music, of which he finished three volumes with the title Syntagma Musicum. The second volume of this work is the most elaborate and valuable of all treatises on instruments and instrumental music in the 16th century. It is considered one of the most remarkable examples of musical scholarship in existance. Among his other titles were Musae Sioniae published in nine parts and Hymnodia Sionae. He ranks high as a writer and also as a composer of church melodies.

lthough they have faded from view now, vibrant legends about the life of Christ flourished in medieval times, frequently eclipsing the Bible itself in influencing art and literature. The text of The Midwife's Tale is derived from one such narrative found in the Arundel Manuscript, a compilation of earlier sources which dates from the 8th century. It contains an extraordinary account of the Nativity by the apocryphal figure of Zachel, a midwife enlisted by Joseph to attend to Mary at the time of birth. Against a dramatic background of cosmic upheaval Zachel tells the story of her astonishing experience: the birth she has witnessed is not one of a human child, for Mary has given birth to Light! Her awe, comprehension, and delight warmly invite our empathy.

For the understanding of the listener (and for the ease of the composer), I have made a metrical paraphrase in English of the original Latin text. A literal translation of the midwife's narrative follows:

"In that hour, everything ceased. There was total silence and fear. For even the winds stopped, they made no breeze; there was no motion of tree leaves; no sound of water was heard. The streams did not flow; there was no motion of the sea. All things produced in the water were quiet; there was no human voice sounding; there was a great silence. For the pole itself ceased its rapid course from that hour. Time almost stopped its measure. All, overwhelmed with great fear, kept silent; we were expecting the advent of the most high God, the end of the world.

"As [Mary's] time drew near, the power of God showed itself openly. The maiden stood looking intently into heaven and became snow-white. For now the end of good things was at hand. When the light had come forth, Mary worshiped him to whom she had given birth. The child himself, like the sun, shone bright, beautiful, and was most delightful to see, because he alone appeared as peace, soothing the whole world. In that hour, when he was born, the voice of many invisible beings in one voice proclaimed "Amen." And the light, when it was born, multiplied, and it obscured the light of the sun itself by its shining rays. The cave was filled by the bright light together with a most sweet odor. The light was born just as dew descends from the earth. For its odor is fragrant beyond all the sweet smell of ointments.

"I, however, stood stupefied and amazed. Awe grasped me. I was gazing intently at the fantastically bright light which had been born. The light, however, after a while, shrank, imitated the shape of an infant, then immediately became outwardly an infant in the usual manner of born infants. I became bold and leaned over and touched him. I lifted him in my hands with great awe, and I was terrified, because he had no weight like other babies who are born. I looked at him closely; there was no blemish on him, but he was in his body totally shining, just as the dew of the most high God. He was light to carry, splendid to see. For a while I was amazed at him because he did not cry as newborn children are supposed to. While I held him, looking into his face, he laughed at me with a most joyful laugh, and, opening his eyes, he looked intently at me. Suddenly a great light came forth from his eyes like a great flash of lightning."

The Arundel Manuscript, chapters 72-74. From David R. Cartlidge and David L. Dugan, eds. and trans., Documents for the Study of the Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), pp. 105-106.

The Midwife's Tale was commissioned by The Boston Cecilia, Donald Teeters, Music Director. Additional funding was provided by the Alfred Nash Patterson Foundation.

Ariel Ramírez was born in Santa Fe, Argentina. He began his piano studies in Santa Fe, and soon became fascinated with the music of the gauchos and creoles in the mountains. He continued his studies in Córdoba where he met the great Argentinian folk singer and songwriter Atahualpa Yupanqui. Following a suggestion from Yupanqui, he visited the North East of Argentina and deepened his research into the traditional rhythms of South America. At the same time continuing his academic studies as a composer at the Conservatorio Nacional of Buenos Aires. In 1946 he made his first recording, with RCA.

Ramírez went on to study classical music in Madrid, Rome and mainly in Vienna, from 1950 to 1954. Back in Argentina, he collected over 400 folk and country songs and popular songs and founded the Compañía de Folklore Ariel Ramírez.

In 1964, Ramírez' composition Misa Criolla marked the beginning of a period of high musical productivity which also saw the composition of Navidad Nuestra (1964), La Peregrinación (1964); Los caudillos (1965); Mujeres Argentinas (1969), and Alfonsina y el Mar (1969), all produced in collaboration with writer Félix Luna.

Misa Criolla and Alfonsina y el Mar are probably his best known compositions. The Misa, a mass for tenor, chorus and orchestra, is based on folk genres such as chacarera, carnavalito and estilo pampeano, with Andean influences and instruments. It is also one of the first masses to be celebrated in a modern language - being contemporary to the Second Vatican Council^{[citation needed]}. Ramírez wrote the piece in 1963-1964 and it was recorded in 1964 by Philips Records, directed by Ramírez himself with Los Fronterizos as featured performers (Philips 820 39 LP, including Navidad Nuestra). It was not publicly performed until 1967 in Düsseldorf, Germany, during a European tour which eventually brought Ariel Ramírez before Pope Paul VI. Equally famous are the recordings with the solo voices of George Dalaras (1989), José Carreras (1990), and Mercedes Sosa (1999). Plácido Domingo recorded the Kyrie (i.e., the first movement of the Misa) with Dominic Miller on guitar (2003).

Albeit not sharing the same worldwide success, Alfonsina y el Mar enjoys great popularity in Latin America and Spain, being one of the most regarded songs in Argentinian folk music. The piece pays homage to poet Alfonsina Storni, evoking her tragical suicide in 1938, when she walked into the sea at La Perla beach in Mar del Plata, and the poem she wrote as a goodbye message, I Am Going to Sleep. Artists of the stature of Mercedes Sosa, Violeta Parra, Alfredo Kraus and José Carreras (with Pasión Vega) have made recordings of the song, as well as many other popular singers including Shakira, Miguel Bosé, Andrés Calamaro and Paloma San Basilio.

Today, Ariel Ramírez is president of the Society of Authors and Composers of the Republic of Argentina (SADAIC).

Other major compositions by Ramírez include the Cantata Sudamericana (again with text by Félix Luna, 1972) and another mass: Misa por la paz y la justicia (with liturgical texts by Félix Luna and Osvaldo Catena, 1980).