Tomasz Szadek (1550 – 1612) was a Polish composer, singer, and cleric of the late Renaissance. He was a representative of the late style of the Franco-Flemish school in Poland. [1]
The Renaissance in Poland lasted from the late 15th to the late 16th century and is widely considered to have been the Golden Age of Polish culture. Ruled by the Jagiellonian dynasty, the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland actively participated in the broad European Renaissance. The multi-national Polish state experienced a period of cultural growth thanks in part to a century without major wars – aside from conflicts in the sparsely populated eastern and southern borderlands. The Reformation spread peacefully throughout the country, while living conditions improved, cities grew, and exports of agricultural products enriched the population, especially the nobility (szlachta) who gained dominance in the new political system of Golden Liberty.
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Gustave Reese gives a birthdate of 1550, but no location. [2] Little is known about his activities prior to his appointment to the royal chapel in Kraków, other than that he had received a baccalaureate degree sometime before his arrival in 1569. He became a curate at the cathedral in the early 1570s, where he also heard confessions. He joined the Capella Rorantistarum, a group of male singers for the Sigismund Chapel of the Wawel Cathedral, and remained with them until 1578. [1] Towards the end of his life, the association of cathedral vicars put him on trial, accusing him of poor performance in administrative duties and having an immoral lifestyle. [3]
Gustave Reese was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is known mainly for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications Music in the Middle Ages (1940) and Music in the Renaissance (1954); these two books remain the standard reference works for these two eras, with complete and precise bibliographical material, allowing for almost every piece of music mentioned to be traced back to a primary source.
Kraków, also spelled Cracow or Krakow, is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 and has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, economic, cultural and artistic life. Cited as one of Europe's most beautiful cities, its Old Town was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Royal Archcathedral Basilica of Saints Stanislaus and Wenceslaus on the Wawel Hill, also known as the Wawel Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic church located on Wawel Hill in Kraków, Poland. More than 900 years old, it is the Polish national sanctuary and traditionally has served as coronation site of the Polish monarchs as well as the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Kraków. Karol Wojtyla, who in 1978 became Pope John Paul II, the day after his ordination to the priesthood, offered his first Mass as a priest in the Crypt of the Cathedral on 2 November 1946, and was ordained Kraków's auxiliary bishop in the Cathedral on 28 September 1958.
Szadek's surviving music was all written for the male voices of his choir. It is in a style equivalent to the work of the late Franco-Flemish school. Of his writing Reese observes that he "shows talent for melodic line, but his polyphonic technique is unresourceful." [2] Much of his writing is homophonic. One of his two masses is based on a chanson by Thomas Crecquillon – Pis ne me peult venir, and is of the parody type. The other is also a parody mass, and based on a Christmas carol. [1]
In music, homophony is a texture in which a primary part is supported by one or more additional strands that flesh out the harmony and often provide rhythmic contrast. This differentiation of roles contrasts with equal-voice polyphony and monophony. Historically, homophony and its differentiated roles for parts emerged in tandem with tonality, which gave distinct harmonic functions to the soprano, bass and inner voices.
Thomas Crecquillon or Créquillon was a Franco-Flemish school composer of the Renaissance. While his place of birth is unknown, it was probably within the region loosely known at the time as the Low Countries, and he probably died at Béthune.
A parody mass is a musical setting of the mass, typically from the 16th century, that uses multiple voices of another pre-existing piece of music, such as a fragment of a motet or a secular chanson, as part of its melodic material. It is distinguished from the two other most prominent types of mass composition during the Renaissance, the cantus firmus and the paraphrase mass. "Parody" often has nothing to do with humor, as in the modern sense of the word; while in some cases bawdy secular songs were indeed used in composition of masses, equally often non-liturgical sacred music such as motets formed the basis for parody masses. Instead of calling it a "parody mass", the term "imitation mass" has been suggested as being both more precise and closer to the original usage, since the term "parody" is based on a misreading of a late 16th-century text.
