Released by Polskie Nagrania Warszawa 0614, Muza SXL 0614
made in Poland, Instrument and year of release unknown.

Side A
00:00 Anonim: PREAMBULUM (z tabulatury Sw. Ducha w Krakowie)
01:21 Anonim: ALIA PHANTASIA SEXTI TONI, PHANTASIA ALlOUA
02:17 Anonim: ALIA PHANTASIA SEXTI TONI II (x tabulatury gdanskiej)
04:32 Wojciech Dlugoraj: VILLANELLA
05:32 Jakub Polak: GAGLlARDA, 06:51 COURANTE
08:12 Anonim: TANIEC, 09:08 TARAPATA (z rekopisu Bibl. Jagiellonskiej ca 1650)
11:01 Jan Podbielski: PRAELUDIUM (z tabulatury warszawskiej)
13:40 Anonim: PRAELUDIUM PRIMI TONI, 14:45 FUGA CAPRICCIO, 16:53 FUGA XIII (z tabulaturawarszawskie

Side B
18:43 Anonim: POLONEZ C-dur nr 1, POLONEZ D-dur nr 15, POLONEZ G-
(ze zbior6w Bononiego XVIII w.)
Anonim: PRAELUDIUM f-moll (ze zbior6w sandomierskich XVIII w.)
Bazyli Bohdanowicz: MAZUREK (1781)
6zef Kozlowski: KONTREDANS
Michal Kleofas Oginski: POLONEZ nr 13, POLONEZ nr 23

BARBARA STRZELECKA is native of Warsaw. Here she studied piano with profs. Zbigniew Drzewiecki, Marcelina Jacynowa, and Maria Wilkomirska. She is a gradulate of Warsaw State Academy of Music in piano, and lLotz State Academy of Music in harpsichord as a pupi! ot prof. Emma Altberg. Appears frequently on the Polish Radio and TV programs. Took part in several annual Festivals of Polish Music in Bydgoszez and in the Third Piano Festival in Slupsk. Gives recitals or takes part in chamber music concerts organized by the National Philharmonic, Warsaw Musical Society, and the National Museum in Warsaw.

First reports about the harpsichord and harpsichord-playing in Poland come from the time of King Wladystaw Jagiello at whose court a certain “Nicolaus clavicymbalista dominae reginae Poloniae” was employed in 1422. After that date reports become frequent and concern not only the royal court but also burgher households and noble manors. We have ample proofs to that effect in chronicles, inventories and pictures from the 15th and the 16th c. At the same time the scholarly curriculum at the University of Cracow required practical knowledge of music including harpsichord-playing from its masters. in addition to theoretical studies. As we can judge on the basis of historical evidence in use were various sizes of the instrument, from little 4′ virginals to big 16′ “clavicimbale cum pedali” recorded in a Cracow inventory of 1497. In. the following centuries the harpsichord belonged to the group of most popular instruments comparable to the piano in the 19th and the 20th c. The piano incidentally, eclipsed its popularity for good as late as the first two decades of the 19th c., though first specimens reached Poland as early as c. 1750. Before that date, however and for some time after it the harpsichord remained the basic solo and continua instrument. Its leading harmonic role in ensemble music ends only with the advent of the mature Classical style. Yet even in the early 19th c. operatic spectacles were sometimes conducted from the cembalo.
Since the harpsichord was well-known in Poland already in the 15th c. first instances of musical compositions for that instrument presumably must have dated from that time, yet first recorded instances come from 16th-century manuscripts.
Early music of that type does not necessarily come under the label “harpsichord”; much of it was written down in the so-called organ tablatures which could be meant for any keyboard instrument. Such is the case with the opening number in our selection, the Praeambulum found in the Tablature of the Holy Ghost Monastery
in Cracow, dated 1548. The three fantasias that follow it come from the Gdansk Tablature of 1591, one of the earliest sources containing purely harpsichordal music in that part of Europe. The choice of three out of seventeen fantasias demonstrates both the florid toccata-like species and the strictly contrapuntal, imitative idiom cultivated side by side in 16th-century keyboard music.
Similar stylistic procedures applied also to Renaissance lute music. Lutanists often modelled their compositions on keyboard music and in spite of considerable polyphonic limitations of the lute emulated the imitative ricercare and fantasia style in lute music. The harpsichordists, on the other hand, tried to imitate the style, texture, and even the sound of lute music (e.g., the lute stop). It seems, the refore, that including three dances for the lute by Wojciech Dlugoraj and Jakub Polak will not be out of place in this context Further two dances for the harpsichord from about 1650 represent mid-seventeenth-century popular dance music.

#BarbaraStrzelecka