An Attempt to Reconstruct the Original Lyrics of the Concerto Mutetta super Nicolai Solemnia by Franciszek Lilius

Franciszek Lilius was one of the most prominent composers of the 17th century Poland, a pedagogue and a choirmaster of Kraków’s Cathedral between 1630 and 1657. The majority of the sources containing his compositions was created after the composer’s death. Many of them are incomplete. Owing to these two facts, we do not know the original version of compositions mentioned by Lilius.

One of the examples is the concerto Mutetta super Nicolai Solemnia preserved in Staatsbibliothek in Berlin as a German contrafactum with the text “Kompt lasst uns betrachten”. The composition may have been performed during servicesat the Protestant church of St. Mary Magdalene in Wrocław. The text probably was modified and adapted to Evangelical requirements in this place. However, originally the work must have been intended to be performed in the Catholic church during the feast of St. Nicholas (the 6th of December), as is suggested not only by its original name – Mutetta super Nicolai Solemnia, but also by the pre-compositional material used in it. This material comprises, on the one hand, the one-voice hymn Nicolai solemnia preserved in e.g. the cantional of Stanisław Serafin Jagodyński from 1639 and the cantional of Literary Archconfraternity in Warsaw from 1668, and on the other hand – its four-voice setting preserved in the Sandomierz and Wawel sources.

If the copyist had not written original Latin title in his manuscript, we would not know what kind of Latin text was previously used by composer. Only this information made it possible to recreate original, missing catholic version of the concerto. The main issue of the article is an attempt to reconstruct the original lyrics of the concerto Mutetta super Nicolai Solemnia and to analyze different problems connected with it.

Requiem Mass by Hieronim Feicht in the Context of His Mass Compositions and the Repertoire of the Stradomski Choir

The article focuses on the background of Hieronim Feicht’s Requiem, which was written during World War II. The main aspect of it is to present main thoughts on mass settings composed by Feicht and to give basic information about their performances given by the choir of theological seminary students of the Congregation of the Mission in Kraków-Stradom. Many of extant documents provide us with precise knowledge about the repertoire and solemnities during which it was sung. Except for performances, the article presents the praxis of performing requiem masses in the first half of the 20th century. Taking this context into consideration, the author presents a brief analysis of the Feicht’s requiem mass setting.

Musical Interpretation of the Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine. Analysis of Irena Wieniawska’s Songs in the Comparison to the Compositions by Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel

The aim of this article is to interpret songs by Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and a less-known composer – Irena Wieniawska (1879−1932), based on the same poems by Paul Verlaine. In the first part of this paper, the relationships between Wieniawska, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel and Verlaine are subsequently described. Then, the author makes a comparison between selected songs by French composers and Madame Poldowski, indicating main similarities and differences. The final part consists of some remarks related to the fact that Wieniawska fulfills features of the French mélodie very strictly. This is why her songs seem to be more traditional, not as allusive and sophisticated as Debussy’s or Ravel’s vocal works.

The 8th Sonnet by William Shakespeare in Songs of Kabalevsky, Stravinsky and Mykietyn

The 8th Sonnet Music to hear by William Shakespeare belongs to so-called “procreation sonnets”, where the poet insists on a young man to marry and have children. It should grant immortality to him and his youthful beauty to the world. The poem, written in iambic pentameter, reveals the structure of an Elizabethan sonnet. The main emphasis is laid on the last stanza which does not serve anymore as a protective advice, but as a warning. The syndrome of the 8th Sonnet, understood after Mieczysław Tomaszewski as a “group of constitutive features” is formed here by the following categories: musicality, metaphorism, oxymoronity, rhetoric and erotic ambivalence. The poem has found its musical interpretations in the output of the 20th century composers: Dmitry Kabalevsky, Igor Stravinsky and Paweł Mykietyn. All songs are both musically and expressively distant from each other, nevertheless each of them reflects an element of the Sonnet’s character. Metaphorism and oxymoronity appear in music of every composer in a very individualized way, which is proved by the analysis of relations between text and music. The sphere of erotic ambivalence is present only in Mykietyn’s song, intended for a male soprano. In a lyrical song by Kabalevsky the musicality and rhetoric of the poem are especially underlined. In a constructivist approach of Stravinsky (dodecaphony) and Mykietyn (circle canon) analogies to an intellectual game and a net of complex literary metaphors in the poem can be found.

(tłum. Iwona Sowińska-Fruhtrunk)

Pierre Schaeffer’s Attempt to Create a Method of Electro-acoustic Music Analysis

Since the middle of the 20th century, electro-acoustic music has become very important in the contemporary music landscape. Electronic elements have forced researchers focused on electro-acoustic music to develop analytical methods. Pierre Schaeffer was a pioneer in systematization of new sounds. His achievements in this area are fundamental, serving nowadays as a reference point for dynamically developing new concepts of electro-acoustic music analysis.

The popularization of Pierre Schaeffer’s method in Poland began with Włodzimierz Kotoński who partially translated Traité des objets musicaux into Polish. In his Traité, Pierre Schaeffer coined one of the most important terms, i.e. a sound object, which is a unit of electro-acoustic music. A sound object is related to reduced listening and is purely perception-oriented. By using a sound object in the context of music, the composer creates a music object.

Schaeffer’s goal in creating an analytical method was to design a new language which could be used in a discussion of “non-classical” sounds. In 1966 Schaeffer introduced his PROGREMU Programme de la Recherche Musicale, which covers the following five stages of musical research: typology, morphology, characterology, analysis, synthesis. In typology and morphology sound objects are isolated from the context, then classified and described – it is a detailed stage of unit systematization. In the next step, sounds are grouped in genres according to their character. Sound objects are analyzed and specified in their musical context. With this information, the composer can make a new musical object. Each stage has its specific function; however, musical composition maintains its primary role. Schaeffer’s method is dynamic in character and it is constantly developed because of new sounds.