Muzyka
article
Gdansk (Danzig) was famous as a centre of musical instrument manufacture during the 16th-18th centuries. Dozens of viol-makers and violin-makers, wind instrument makers, and finally keyboard instrument makers were recorded throughout that period. Viols, trumpets and harpsichords from Gdansk are listed in many court, church, convent and town inventories from Poland, Scandinavian and other countries...
article
This article is a commentary to the opinion of Pope Clement VIII, quoted in a letter by Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini dated 14th October 1595, when Luca Marenzio together with a group of other musicians was leaving Rome for the court of King Sigismund III Vasa in Poland. According to the Pope, the Eternal City was being stripped of musicians at that time. The authoress has attempted to identify other...
article
At the beginning of this article the author draws attention to the fact that during recent years a sizeable body of so far totally unknown source material concerning Busoni has come to light, which makes it possible to carry out a much fuller reconstruction of his views on opera theatre than was possible only a few years earlier. Busoni was constructing his poetics of opera theatre above all in opposition...
article
The experimental singspiel 'Alceste' by C.M. Wieland and A. Schweitzer, performed in 1773 at the theatre of Weimar, by the company of Seyler is one of the outstanding landmarks regarding the development of the German Singspiel during the second half of the 18th century. It is commented by Wieland himself in a series of articles and 'letters' and indeed, considering the inner dramatic structure of...
article
Polish historiography of Silesia devotes relatively little space to the German contribution to the development of this region. This concerns also the manufacture of musical instruments, including pianofortes and pianos. The main centre of such manufacture was Wroclaw, although from mid-nineteenth century it was overtaken by Legnica. Polish musicians, as well as German ones, gave concerts using instruments...
article
Since a recent archival discovery it has been known that Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz was 'Friderici imperatoris cappelanus'. It is remarkable that, in spite of having worked as a composer, he was not named as an imperial 'cantor' in the document in question, which dates from 1452. This is surprising, because many chapel singers who were documented in the archives of the imperial residence would be...
article
A wide variety of unusual clefs can be observed in the mensural codex from St. Emmeram, available in the Bavarian State Library (Clm 14274): Gamma-clefs, d-clefs, in combination within a single staff-system with clefs such as c1/g3/d5 or c1/gg3/dd5 , and double clef-letters as well, such as gg. Occasionally clefs are almost totally absent, or they occur only at the beginning of a voice-part, etc....
article
The author seeks answers to questions in the following two areas: 1) What were the origins of the collection of medieval songs and motets from the songbooks of Bohemian literati brotherhoods dating to about 1500, and what was the role of the compositions of Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz in that collection; 2) How was medieval polyphony treated and adapted in Bohemia and in Central Europe from the end...
article
One of the most interesting research tasks relating to the Strahov codex (dated 1467-1470) is establishing its provenance. Until now the areas considered likely included eastern Silesia or the Bohemian-Silesian borderland (Plamenac, Snow), Moravia, particularly Olomutz and, more recently, the Catholic part of southern Bohemia (Cerny, Mrácková). In this paper the author discusses the links between...
article
The Codex Speciálnik (c. 1485-1500), an important European music manuscript of its time, contains about 200 pieces of fifteenth-century polyphony. Its repertory includes contemporary music written by leading composers of the second half of the fifteenth century (from Pullois to early works of Josquin and his contemporaries), as well as pieces of Central European origin. A group of compositions called...
article
The paper presents the tenth chapter of 'Tabulatura muzyki abo zaprawa muzykalna' ('The tablature of music or musical practice'), which is a handbook of music, the first one written in Polish by Jan Alexander Gorczyn, a well-known polish bookseller, printer, engraver and author of several works on various subjects. The book appeared in print in Cracow in 1647. It had been adressed to beginners in...
article
The literature of the subject does not provide much information about the manuscript in question and the article constitutes the first full source edition of this material. The tablature referred to now as M 6983 (olim Ms. Grasse 5102) was created in southern Germany around 1600. In the nineteenth century it belonged to the collection of Philipp Spitta, after whose death (in 1894) it came to be at...
article
Archival searches revealed the circumstances surrounding the departure of Luca Marenzio (in October 1595) from Rome for Poland. They also documented (unfortunately only for the autumn of 1596) his activities as a composer and as maestro di cappella of King Sigismund III Vasa. We are still not certain of the duration of Marenzio's career in Poland, or which of his compositions originate from this period...
article
The article presents a proposal for an analytical method which would make it possible to investigate relationships between the pitch and the colour parameters of a musical composition. The method is employed to analyze the sonoristic and the so-called 'segmental' compositions of Kazimierz Serocki. It is normative, formalized, and stands in opposition to descriptive analyses, widespread in the literature...
article
Synagogal chants published in the nineteenth century in modern musical notation alerted scholars to the fact that they are based on melodic principles different from those of the music of the West. Towards the end of the century researchers began to identify the scales on which the melodies were based, and to relate them to the system of Church Modes and the Greek Oktoechos.The Vienna cantor Josef...
article
The article discusses Silesian sources transmitting the works of Jacob Handl (Gallus) (1550-91), which have not so far been given adequate consideration in the literature of the subject. The composer travelled between the various music centres in Silesia after 1575 and had temporary links with them, as numerous manuscripts of Silesian provenance testify. The fact that many of them were written even...
article
Literature devoted to Szymanowski gives little space to the relationship between the composer and his publishers. This article, based on published correspondence and papers held at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, presents minor episodes relating to the contacts between Szymanowski and Röder's printing firm in Leipzig and Stahl's music store in Berlin. These firms played a significant part during the...
article
The article is based on the unpublished documents held in the Archive of the Ethnographic Museum in Torun (MET), left by Maria Znamierowska-Prüffer (1898 -1990), who worked at the Ethnology Department of the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius and was also curator of the University's Ethnographic Museum. Among these documents are museum reports and letters from people who collaborated with the museum...
article
This paper analyses the contents and the aesthetic and ideological principles of musical reviews published by Stefania Lobaczewska in 'Gazeta Lwowska' during the years 1928-34. Particular prominence has been given to those elements of her music criticism which allow one to place it within the framework of ideological doctrines and programmes of musical composition of the period and to search for connections...
article
The author discusses the question of instrumental colouring in the orchestral works of Tadeusz Baird. In the first section he analyses configurations of parts and their potential influence on the timbre of the composition, while in the second he considers the ways in which the composer makes use of the tone palette offered by a symphony orchestra. Baird's youthful symphonic compositions, influenced...
