Polska pieśń wielogłosowa XVI i początku XVII wieku

This two-volume edition contains all the extant polyphonic hymns and songs of the period in the history of Polish music known as the Renaissance, except for those which have survived in large printed collections, such as Mikołaj Gomółka's Melodiae na Psałterz polski, or the 1601 edition of Artomius' Cantional. By the terms "hymn" and "song" we mean the combination of a particular text with a particular piece of music, hence we have included two contrafacta of the psalms by J. Walter, even though their original versions cannot be said to belong to the class of Polish music in any obvious way. The starting point for this collection of materials was the detailed list of Polish 16th-century printed music published by Anna Szweykowska under the title Pieśni wielogłosowe XVI w. Wykaz druków luźnych. For the present purposes this material has been extended to encompass a few early 17th-century brochures and a couple of works surviving in manuscripts or larger printed works. Today only one work, discovered in 1973, should be added to Anna Szweykowska's list to make it complete. We have been able to put into this volume those works which she enumerated as lost or undecipherable, and we have also been able to trace the history of many of the sources. To date only one four-part song listed by Anna Szweykowska, Wiersz nowo uczyniony do Rzeczypospolitej polskiej na szczęśliwy przyjazd K. J. M. [A poem newly made for the Commonwealth to mark the safe arrival of H. M. the King - sine loco et anno], and mentioned in Estreicher's Bibliografia polska, remains unknown. Hymns and songs, quantitatively the largest genre in Polish 16th-century polyphony, have always inspired the interest of music editors. In our commentaries we give details regarding the hitherto editions for the particular works. However previous editors have always been selective, choosing either the works of a given composer, or a given text subject (or author), or finally in accordance with some preferred aesthetic feature of the music. Here, on the other hand, in outcome of a new publishing decision, for the first time the reader will have the chance to see the full range of the extant works available in all the diverse sources.

Vol. no. 1 contains music and commentaries, vol. no. 2 containd texts of the songs.

Ed. by Piotr Poźniak and Wacław Walecki