Remarks on the Melody, Form, and History of the Old Polish Song ‘O, Most Famous of Virgins’
Abstract
The medieval Marian song ‘O, Most Famous and Pure Virgin’, first published by W.A. Maciejowski, has also been fragmentarily preserved, in a slightly different version, in the files of B. Erzepki (published by W. Wydra). A third unpublished record comes from the 1586 ‘Staniątki Cantional’. Despite its irregular structure, the song was sung in sixteenth-century Polish churches, as confirmed by, among others, the founding act of the Mielec provostry (1526), and by two organ settings found in the Jan of Lublin Tablature. The vocal versions of these settings reconstructed by H. Feicht and J. Węcowski, with the song melody quoted in the tenor, may raise serious doubts, among others because the tablature copyist’s clues concerning the formal pattern of the piece are unclear. Records of the song ‘O, Most Famous Word of God’ published in all editions of Jan Seklucjan’s Cantionals (1547, 1550, 1559) can help to reconstruct the Marian composition. The publisher of these Cantionals, Piotr Poźniak, found no concordances of this song in other Polish, Czech, and German sources. However, the melody was undoubtedly borrowed from the Marian song ‘O, Most Famous and Pure Virgin’. The Protestant contrafactum preserves the incipit of the Catholic piece and quite likely had a polemical undertone, as it opposed following the Word of God to the Marian cult. The records contained in Jan Seklucjan’s Cantionals make it possible to establish the original versification of the Marian song (which consisted of six verses, not seven, as in Maciejowski’s edition) and to correct the apparently misleading performance indications found in the tablature. Though to date no model has been discovered for this Marian piece, it may have been inspired by the melody of the song ‘Depromemus laudes’, whose earliest source is in the Franus Cantional (1505). At the end of the paper, the author presents a reconstruction of ‘O, Most Famous and Pure Virgin’ based on Seklucjan and the Jan of Lublin Tablature, as well as a transliteration and transcription of the Staniątki source.
Keywords:
Polish medieval songs, Jan of Lublin Tablature, Jan Seklucjan, Old Polish Marian songs, O, Most Famous and Pure Virgin, Protestant songs, Czech songsReferences
Bobowski, Mikołaj. Polskie pieśni katolickie od najdawniejszych czasów do końca XVI wieku. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Akademii Umiejętności, 1893.
Google Scholar
Clavis scriptorum et operum Medii Aevi Poloniae. Opr. Jerzy Kaliszuk, Aneta Pieniądz, Piotr Węcowski, Krzysztof Skwierczyński. Kraków: Homini, 2019.
Google Scholar
Jana Seklucjana Pieśni chrześcijańskie dawniejsze i nowe. Wyd. Anna Kalisz. Kraków: Collegium Colombinum, 2005 (= Biblioteka Tradycji 62).
Google Scholar
Johannes of Lublin: Tabulature of Keyboard Music. Wyd. John R. White. [Roma]: American Institute of Musicology, 1967 (= Corpus of Early Keyboard Music 6).
Google Scholar
Maciejowski, Wacław Aleksander. Pamiętniki o dziejach, piśmiennictwie i prawodawstwie Słowian. T. 1–2. Petersburg–Lipsk: Księgarnie Eggersa i Hinrichsa, 1839.
Google Scholar
Mazurkiewicz, Roman. O melodiach kancjonałów Jana Seklucjana z 1547 i 1559 roku. Przyczynek do dziejów chorału protestanckiego w Polsce. Kraków: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1967.
Google Scholar
Mazurkiewicz, Roman. Polskie średniowieczne pieśni maryjne. Studia filologiczne. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pedagogicznej, 2002.
Google Scholar
Melodiarium hymnologicum Bohemiae, http://www.musicologica.cz/melodiarium, dostęp 8 III 2022.
Google Scholar
Muzyka staropolska: wybór nie publikowanych utworów z XII–XVIII wieku / Old Polish Music: A Selection of Hitherto Unpublished Works from the XIIth–XVIIIth Centuries. Red. Hieronim Feicht. Kraków: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1966.
Google Scholar
Najstarsze kompozycje w Polsce: XI–XVI wiek. Wyd. Jan Węcowski. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Muzyczne Polihymnia, 2016 (= Thesaurus Musicae Antiquae et Novae 4).
Google Scholar
Pieśni z kancjonałów Jana Seklucjana (1547, 1550, 1559) oraz z różnych druków ok. 1154–ok. 1607. Wyd. Anna Kocot, Piotr Poźniak. Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 2012 (= Hymnorum Poloniae Antiquorum Corpus I).
Google Scholar
Pieśni z katechizmów ewangelików reformowanych (1558-1600). Wyd. Magdalena Komorowska, Piotr Poźniak. Cz. 1, Katechizm krakowski i królewiecki. Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 2018 (= Hymnorum Poloniae Antiquorum Corpus III/1).
Google Scholar
Polskie pieśni wielkanocne. Średniowiecze i wiek XVI. T. 2., opr. muz. Tadeusz Maciejewski. Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy PA X, 2001.
Google Scholar
Średniowieczna religijna pieśń polska. Wyd. Aleksander Brückner. Kraków: Nakładem Krakowskiej Spółki Wydawniczej, 1923 (= Biblioteka Narodowa, Seria 1, nr 65).
Google Scholar
Średniowieczna pieśń religijna polska. Wyd. Mirosław Korolko. Wrocław–Warszawa–Kraków–Gdańsk: Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich, 1980 (= Biblioteka Narodowa, Seria 1, nr 65).
Google Scholar
Tabulatura Joannis de Lublin, Repertuar / Repertoire. Wyd. Zofia Dobrzańska-Fabiańska. T. 1, Utwory liturgiczne i inne religijne. Warszawa: Instytut Sztuki PAN , 2021 (= Monumenta Musicae in Polonia).
Google Scholar
Wydra, Wiesław. „Trzy staropolskie pieśni religijne z ineditów Bolesława Erzepkiego”. Studia Polonistyczne Uniwersytetu A. Mickiewicza w Poznaniu 10 (1982): 211–227.
Google Scholar
Authors
Jakub KubieniecJagiellonian University, Kraków Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5050-3640
Statistics
Abstract views: 218PDF downloads: 157
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Jakub Kubieniec
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author grants the publisher a royalty-free nonexclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Muzyka, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in "Muzyka" should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). By submitting an article the author agrees to make it available under CC BY 4.0 license.
Articles from 2018/1 to 2022/3 were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted the publisher a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in "Muzyka", retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Jakub Kubieniec, On the Antiphon 'Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum' by Blessed Ladislas of Gielniów , Muzyka: Vol. 66 No. 1 (2021)
- Jakub Kubieniec, The Bohemian ‘carmina clericorum’ in Polish Sources: The Case of ‘O Maria, mater Christi’ / ‘O Maryja, matko Boża’ , Muzyka: Vol. 68 No. 4 (2023)
- Jakub Kubieniec, The Polish Office for St James the Greater , Muzyka: Vol. 62 No. 3 (2017)
- Jakub Kubieniec, Piotr Poźniak (26 VIII 1939–23 XI 2016) , Muzyka: Vol. 62 No. 4 (2017)
