Václav Karel Holan Rovenský (1644,

Rovensko pod Troskami Rovensko pod Troskami is a town in Semily District in the Liberec Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 1,400 inhabitants. Administrative parts The villages of Blatec, Křečovice 2.díl, Liščí Kotce, Štěpánovice and Václaví are admin ...

– 27 February 1718, Rovensko pod Troskami) was Czech

baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

composer and organist.

Life and work

Rovenský had been organist in Turnov and

(where he was also cantor) from 1668 and in

Dobrovice Dobrovice is a town in Mladá Boleslav District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 3,500 inhabitants. Administrative parts Villages of Bojetice, Chloumek, Holé Vrchy, Libichov, Sýčina, Týnec and Úherce are admi ...

in 1679–1680. During his tenure at Vyšehrad he may have taken a pilgrimage to Rome and sometime in the early eighteenth century he lived a prayerful and hermit-like existence at Waldstein Castle near Turnov. His magnum opus is ''Cappella Regia Musicalis'' ( Prague, 1693), containing 772 pieces, which was almost certainly the fruit of his 12-plus years as a provincial cantor. The publication coincides with his appointment as organist at Vyšehrad in Prague, though he may have been in the city for some time before that. Cappella Regia Musicalis is a massive collection of hymns, sacred and festive songs, and all manner of musical settings of almost all central parts of the Roman Catholic

liturgy Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...

, all printed primarily in Czech. It is difficult to tell just how much of the collection was composed by Holan himself (though it is clear that many other composers are represented), and some of the songs and other pieces are clearly much older, such as the anonymous fifteenth century Czech settings of the Passion. Curiously, the collection also contains many earlier Protestant and even Hussite songs, making it something of a survey of Czech sacred song to date. Unlike most other Czech hymnals, many pieces in Holan's collection also included basso continuo and even obbligato instruments such as violins, viols, and trumpets. Another curious feature of this rather amazing publication is that no two surviving copies are alike, leading to suspicions that they may have been made-to-order. It would seem that Johann Heinrich Schmelzer was familiar with it, since a (greatly expanded) German-language version of one of the pieces circulated under his name. Sections of Cappella Regia Musicalis were continually copied and reprinted throughout the ensuing centuries and, in some quarters, have been the basis for many Czech hymnals.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Holan Rovensky, Vaclav Karel 1644 births 1718 deaths People from Semily District 17th-century classical composers 17th-century people from Bohemia 18th-century classical composers 18th-century male musicians 18th-century musicians from Bohemia Czech Baroque composers Czech male classical composers Czech classical musicians Czech Roman Catholics 17th-century male musicians