Marcin Mielczewski and Music under the Patronage of the Polish Vasas

This first monograph of the life and oeuvre of Marcin Mielczewski (d. 1651) sets it in the context of musical life at the courts of the Polish Vasas, particularly King Ladislaus IV and Bishop Charles Ferdinand. Much attention is devoted to the evidence of the reception of Mielczewski's music in seventeenth-century Europe.

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The first monograph of the life and oeuvre of Marcin Mielczewski (d. 1651) presents the best known Polish composer of seventeenth-century Europe. During the 1990s, while exploring a newly accessible collection of music manuscripts from Silesia (the Sammlung Bohn) held in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, the author found 37 compositions signed M.M., which she ascribed to Mielczewski. This discovery, representing more than half the composer's known legacy, fuelled a considerable rise in interest in Mielczewski's output among musicologists and musicians. In this book, the current state of knowledge about Marcin Mielczewski's life and work is presented within the context of the musical patronage of King Ladislaus IV Vasa of Poland and his brother, Bishop Charles Ferdinand.