Habermann, Jan Piotr (EN)

Habermann Jan Piotr, *1st half of the 18th century, †after July 1762, Polish violinist, chapel master and composer. There is no evidence to suggest that he was related to the Czech musical Habermann family. From August 1737 to February 1738, he worked as a paid secular musician at the Jesuit boarding school in Krakow, where he was described as an “excellent violinist”; in the 1740s he served as chapel master for the Jesuits in Lviv, and also maintained musical contacts with the local Benedictine nuns, to whom he dedicated his works (these manuscripts, including an autograph dated 1748, are currently held at the Diocesan Library in Sandomierz). In 1759–60, he was employed at the court of Hieronim Florian Radziwiłł (in Biała Podlaska and Słuck); his duties included playing the viola d’amore and teaching a large group of boys to sing and play various instruments; he was brought there from Pińsk, where he may have previously worked at a Jesuit boarding school. He probably later returned to Kraków, from where, in July 1762, he was recruited to the Pauline chapel at Jasna Góra, although he remained there for only one month. His subsequent fate is unknown, though it is known that he was already seriously ill by 1759.

In terms of style, Habermann’s works represent a transitional form, in which elements of the galant style clearly overlap with the technical means of the late Baroque. This is most evident in the melodies, which abound in small ornaments such as trills, grace notes, figures composed of two sixteenth or thirty-second notes, Lombardic rhythms spanning a single beat, and similar devices. A departure from Baroque technical norms is also apparent in the increasingly limited role of the basso continuo, which sometimes rests for as many as several bars (O felix et Beata dies), as well as in the handling of the string ensemble in unison passages. Three of Habermann’s surviving works are da capo arias in fully crystallised form, built on a modulatory scheme with a contrasting second section. Autograph sources indicate that the composer provided performance instructions with great care, specifying details of agogics, dynamics, and phrasing.

Literature: Z. Szweykowski [Introduction], in: Jan Piotr Habermann: Utwory wokalno-instrumentalne, ed. Z. Szweykowski, «Źródła do Historii Muzyki Polskiej» X, Krakow 1966; P. Podejko Kapela wokalno-instrumentalna na Jasnej Górze, “Studia Claromontana” 19 (2001); I. Bieńkowska Muzyka na dworze księcia Hieronima Floriana Radziwiłła, Warsaw 2013; M. Walter-Mazur, Figurą i fraktem. Kultura muzyczna polskich benedyktynek w XVII i XVIII wieku, Poznań 2014.