Michał Gondko

Michał Gondko – Mortua dulce cano. A Florilegium of Late Renaissance Lute Music (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:04:45 minutes | 2,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée

“Dum vixi tacui; mortua dulce cano” (“While I lived I was silent; dead, I sing sweetly”). Found in the portrait of the sixteenth-century lute maker Gaspar Tieffenbrucker, these words, spoken by the imaginary tone wood used for centuries in the manufacture of string instruments, fittingly depict its double life.
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Michał Gondko – Polonica (Renaissance Lute, ca 1600) (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:10:49 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée

In addition to the works attributed to the lutenists active at the Royal Polish court in the late sixteenth century, there is a substantial repertoire of compositions identified as ‘Polish dances’ or ‘Polish songs’ which have been preserved in numerous sources of late Renaissance lute music. Characterized by an irresistible melodic charm and a straightforward harmonic and rhythmical texture, such musical polonica spread across Europe, achieving what might have been the widest distribution of musical ‘Polishness’ before Chopin. Four hundred years later, Polish lutenist Michal Gondko sets out to trace polonica in lute tablatures from around 1600, and presents a selection of forty compositions, many of which have not been previously recorded.

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