Teksty liturgiczne w XVIII-wiecznych kompozycjach z Grodziska Wielkopolskiego

Abstract

It was In the XVIIIth century that secular music started to make its way into church music. Liturgical texts were disregarded, they were shortened or changed or even omitted. Pope Benedict XIV tried to prevent such abuse by issuing the encyclical "Annus Qui" in 1749. In the collection of manuscripts from Grodzisk a great degree of freedom can be observed in the way the composers use liturgical texts. The so called "Missae breves" consisted exclusively of the Kyrie and the Gloria. In the case of solemn mass on the other hand, certain fragments were extended to an extraordinary degree and followed by numerous instrumental insertions or divided from one another by musical interludes composed in the spirit of the epoch. The collection of scores in Grodzisk contains a series of small-scale compositions elaborated in the style of the concerto motet. They can be divided into four groups: antiphones, hymns, sequences and cantiones. As for the Vespers, the Sunday Vespers and the Vespers of the Holy Virgin occupy a special place, but there can also be found quite a number of compositions in which the texts are either a kind of free elaboration of biblical texts or religious poetry. Characteristic of the Grodzisk compositions is their considerable liberty in their use of the texts. The compositions for masses were the closest to the original liturgical texts. The composers no longer paid any attention to the contents in compositions of the motet type, in offertories, graduals or in arias. The arbitrary changes of text can be partially justified by the formal structure of the compositions and, on the other hand, by the performance possibilities of the musical groups they were written for.