H.I.P.S.T.E.R. Historically Informed Performance Series, Teaching, Education & Research: FANTASIES, SONGS, AND DANCES: Music from 16th-century Poland Michał Gondko, lute Corina Marti, harpsichord

Lutenist Michał Gondko and harpsichordist Corina Marti perform music from 15th & 16th century Poland—a period considered to be Poland’s cultural “Golden Age” when it burst onto the scene of European politics and, supported by economic prosperity, saw its cultural dimension expand, bringing in humanist ideals and cultural trends imported from Italy, Germany, and Flanders. Poland’s music broke from medieval models, alongside a wealth of European music to which Polish scribes and musicians had access during the mid-1500s, as witnessed by the Lublin keyboard collection containing everything from improvisatory forms, to arrangements of sacred and secular vocal music, as well as dances. All of these manuscripts show an early vogue for “Polish songs and dances” which soon after was to spread across Europe: a much more widely-distributed, though harder to pinpoint, musical “Polishness” well before Chopin.