‘Lamentationes’ by Wacław of Szamotuły: Fragments of missing partbooks discovered in Gniezno

Ryszard J. Wieczorek

Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9697-2474

Michał Wysocki

Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0279-5313

Abstract

As a result of the process of cataloguing the collections preserved in the Archdiocesan Archive of Gniezno, which started in 2013, old prints have been discovered with original bindings containing fragments of earlier prints, which had been discarded and reused as binding waste. The discovered old prints include Nicolas Bohier’s book Consilia (shelf-mark BS 1909), published in Lyon in 1554, originally preserved in the Benedictine monastery in Lubiń. First to reveal this important discovery in the public domain were Jakub Łukaszewski and Wiesław Wydra of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, who prepared a facsimile edition, with a brief commentary, of all nine fragments of prints extracted from the binding of the Gniezno volume.¹

The discovered fragments originate from Cracow printing houses and date from the period 1531–55. Of particular value is a printed sheet from the firm of Łazarz Andrysowic containing fragments of both the previously missing partbooks of Lamentationes Hieremiae Prophetae by Wacław of Szamotuły (shelf-mark AAGn. PL 489), published in 1553. To date, the only known partbooks have been the Tenor, preserved in Munich, and the Cantus, discovered in Regensburg in 1983. The fragments extracted from the binding of the Gniezno volume contain passages of the bass and alto parts for the first, second and third reading on Maundy Thursday. Both passages of the alto part are in the tenor clef (C4), which suggests that the Lamentationes were written for an ensemble of low voices. Although one is tempted to speculate that Wacław of Szamotuły wrote the work with the male forces of the Capella Rorantistarum in mind, it seems equally likely that he was influenced by the strong tradition of lamentation settings, generally composed for low voices. Each of the three fragments contain numerous depletions, caused by the deterioration of the paper, but it has been possible to recover more than one hundred bars from both missing partbooks and to reconstruct three passages of Lamentationes in a three-part form.

The reasons why the sheet containing the composition by Wacław of Szamotuły was used as binding waste are easy to identify. It turns out that the reused material was originally a test print of two parts, which could not be incorporated into a partbook, containing several misprints. Given that the discovered fragments are part of a composition by one of the most eminent Polish composers of the sixteenth century, and that the said composition was the largest work published in print in Poland during this period and also represented probably the greatest Polish publishing initiative prior to the edition of Mikołaj Gomółka’s Melodies for the Polish Psalter (1580), this discovery must be regarded as being of great significance.

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¹ Jakub Łukaszewski and Wiesław Wydra, Fragmenty ‘Kota z Lwem’ Mikołaja Reja i innych druków z XVI w. odnalezione [The discovery of fragments from Mikołaj Rej’s Kot z Lwem [Cat and lion] and other sixteenth-century prints] (Poznań, Wydawnictwo ‘Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne’, 2016).