Chicago native and Polish-American Tom Zajac leads the ensemble in this rich repertoire, assured to open the ears to new sounds. Concert programmes include masterworks by Waclaw z Szamotul, Mikołaj Gomołka, Jan z Lublina, Wojciech Długoraj, Bartłomiej Pekiel, Adam Jarzębski, Mikołaj Zieleński and others.
In the 16th and early-17th centuries, Poland was one of the richest, most powerful countries in Europe. It was also geographically large, encompassing present-day Lithuania and Latvia and large portions of what is now Ukraine, Belarus, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany. Poland reached the height of its powers by the middle of the 16th century through fortuitous events and favorable economic and political conditions, and part of its cultural riches lay in its music.
As the population of Western Europe grew, Poland became its breadbasket. A long-standing alliance with Lithuania culminated in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569, which benefited from an early form of parliamentary government that gave the landed gentry unprecedented civil liberties and political influence. As the middle class prospered, patronage of the arts increased, and Poland looked westward, particularly to Germany and then to Italy for its cultural influence.
Unfortunately, relatively little of the untold cultural riches, whether in manuscript or print, survived the ravages of subsequent wars and social upheavals. Even leading composers of that era are scantly represented, often by only one or two pieces. What survives, however, gives a vibrant picture of musical life in Kraków and the Commonwealth's other musical centers.
Tom Zajac, guest conductor and creator of the Chicago programmes, is a multi-instrumentalist and specialist in medieval and Renaissance music - and is second-generation Polish-American. He took part in a research visit to Poland in August 2011, at the invitation of the Polish Cultural Institute New York, to hear Polish early music and meet musicians and ensembles at two festivals: the Narol Festival and the Jaroslaw Song of Our Roots Festival in southeast Poland. He collected much material on his visit, including music that is rarely if ever heard in the U.S., and wrote an article for the Early Music America Journal about these experiences, published in their Winter 2011-12 issue.
The concert series opens with two rather famous chants, which honour St. Stanislaw, the patron saint of Poland, Gaude Mater Polonia, and Ortus de Polonia. Subsequent pieces employ the same chant as the tenor of a four-part setting by German-born Jerzy Liban, an early 16th-century theorist and composer.
Other pieces include Polish anonymous songs from Jan of Lublin’s Organ Book (c.1540). This manuscript contains some 300 sacred, secular and didactic works, making it the largest surviving collection of keyboard music from Renaissance Europe. Written in German organ tablature, once owned and perhaps compiled by the organist Jan of Lublin, it includes pieces by notable Western composers including Senfl, Josquin, Sermisy and Jannequin, and large numbers of anonymous Polish pieces. Some pieces in the collection, like the anonymous love song Oczy me mile / My Lovely Eyes, have been reunited by modern scholars with their texts, discovered in literary sources.
Another source for the programme is the collection of Mikołaj Gomołka, which includes150 psalms with idiomatic vernacular translations from Latin by great 16th-century Polish poet Jan Kochanowski. This collection proved tremendously popular - it made psalms accessible to the rising merchant class, who sang and played from the collection as a form of home entertainment.
The Newberry Consort also present works of the polyphonist Wacław z Szamotuł, which survived mainly in German sources. Like many Polish composers of his day, Wacław had varied skills; as a poet, he wrote Latin panegyrics celebrating the royal family’s life, and worked as a secretary to governors and aristocrats. He died young, probably while in his mid-30s, which led a contemporary writer to claim: "If the Gods had let him live longer, the Poles would have no need to envy the Italians their Palestrina, Lappi and Viadana."
More detailed information about the Polish Renaissance works presented as part of the concert can be viewed on the website of the Polish Cultural Institute New York.
Beguiling and intelligent, provocative and classic, the Newberry Consort has been delighting audiences for nearly three decades. Directed by David Douglass, Newberry Musician-in-Residence, and early music diva Ellen Hargis, the ensemble plumbs the Newberry Library's vast music collection and assembles a star-studded roster of local and international artists to deliver world-class performances of music from the 13th to the 18th centuries, and occasionally beyond. Affiliated with the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies, the Consort also serves as an ensemble-in-residence at both the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.
Details of the Newberry Consort Concert Series:
GAUDE, MATER POLONIA
Music from Poland's Golden Age
May 3, 2013, 8 pm
Copernicus Foundation Annex
5216 West Lawrence Avenue
Chicago, IL
May 4, 2013, 8 pm
Logan Center for the Arts
University of Chicago
915 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL
May 5, 2013, 3 pm
Lutkin Hall
Northwestern University
700 University Place
Evanston, IL
Pre-concert lectures start one hour before each performance.
Editor: Paulina Schlosser
Source: Polish Cultural Institute New York