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FANTASIAE, CANTIONES ET CHOREAE Music of Sixteenth-Century Poland Rex (anonymous) Bona corea (?Nicolaus Cracoviensis, 1st half of the 16th century) Fantasia (Benedictus de Drusina, active 1556-1573) Ave ierarchia (Nicolaus Cracoviensis) Polnischer Tantz (anonymous) Kleszczmy rekoma (Mikolaj Gomólka, c1535-after 1591) Polnische Täntze (Matthäus Waissel, c1535/40-1602) Praeambulum in G per B (?Nicolaus Cracoviensis) Zaklolam sz˙a Tharnem (Nicolaus Cracoviensis) Chorea polonica (Ambrosius Albertus Dlugoraj, 1557/8-?after 1619) Cantio polonica (anonymous) Passamezzo Jeszcze Marczynye (anonymous) / Praeludium (Diomedes Cato, 1560/65-1628) Volte (Ambrosius Albertus Dlugoraj) Ha˙duczk˙ (?Nicolaus Cracoviensis) Praeambulum super d (anonymous) Vita in ligno moritur (anonymous, after Ludwig Senfl) Praeambulum supre e (anonymous) Rex autem David (anonymous) Kryste dnyu nassey swyatlosci (Waclaw z Szamotul, c1524-?1560) Potorae Koniginn inn Polen Tantz (anonymous) Fantasia primi toni (anonymous) Fantasia (Jacob Reys dit Pollonois, c1550-c1605) Juz sye zmierzka (Waclaw z Szamotul) Polnischer Tantz (anonymous) Ein gutter polnischer Tantz (anonymous)
FANTASIAE, CANTIONES ET CHOREAE Music from Sixteenth-Century Poland The sixteenth century is traditionally considererd to have been Poland’s “Golden Age”. Before 1500, the first Jagiellonian rulers suceeded in attaining for their kingdom the status of a major player in European politics. This, and the general economic prosperity, enabled their sixteenth-century heirs to enrich the ancestors’ legacy with a new cultural dimension in accordance with the ideals of humanism and the latest artistic trends imported from the leading cultural centres in Italy, Germany and Flanders. In music, as in other arts, a departure from medieval traditions in favor of up-to-date progressive models has been gradual and can be detected in the repertoire composed and performed in sixteeth-century Poland, vocal and instrumental alike. The early music of Poland has been described as “Polish perspective of European music” (M. Perz) and the meaning of this may be grasped from a look into the monumental keyboard tablature once owned by a certain Johannes de Lublin at the Canons Regular monastery in Krasnik. One of the largest of its kind in Europe, this anthology reveals an impressive panorama of repertoire to which its scribes had access in Poland during the years 1537-48: from abstract, improvisatory forms, through arrangements of sacred and secular vocal music, to dances. Although the geographical scope of the repertoire contained here is wide, composers were not always foreigners. The lute seems to have enjoyed a wider popularity across the layers of the sixteenth-century Polish society than the keyboard instruments. And yet, far fewer sources of lute music survive than of keyboard music. Nevertheless, the earliest known Polish manuscript lute tablature (mid-1550s), although considerably more modest in size and quality of the content that the Lublin manuscript, represents a similar cross section of international repertoire. Interestingly, some of the music with Polish connotations that these sources transmit, is symptomatic of a vogue for “Polish songs“ and “Polish dances” which soon after was to spread across Europe, achieving what might have been the widest distribution of musical “Polishness” before Chopin. Traditions of keyboard and lute playing have been interrelated since the fifteenth century, with players often capable of performing on either of the two instruments. Despite producing distinctive sounds, the harpsichord and the lute – both plucked stringed instruments – blend quite naturally. To explore their combined sound, we have derived our own “duo” versions from existing pieces of vocal and instrumental music. Interspersed among them are compositions intended for solo performance on each instrument. Rarely heard today, all this repertoire combines into a representative sample of instrumental music that has been enjoyed in this part of Europe in general, and in Poland in particular, during the Renaissance.