A Few Remarks on Piarist Musicians of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Stachowicz, Pasternacki, Szczawnicki and Caspar

Ryszard Mączyński

Abstract

To date, the music cultivated by the Piarist Order in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth has seldom been the subject of research. For half a century, the core of available knowledge on the subject has derived from the now classic article “Kultura muzyczna u pijarów w XVII i XVIII wieku” [The musical culture of the Piarist Order during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries] by the musicologists Anna and Zygmunt Szweykowski and the Piarist monk Jan Innocenty Buba. It is all the more interesting, therefore, to welcome two publications devoted to this subject that appeared in 2009. One of them is an extensive monograph by Maciej Jochymczyk focussing on the life and work of Damian Stachowicz, seemingly the most eminent composer among the members of the Pious Schools. The other book is of a completely different character: it is a catalogue of compositions held in the archive in Modra, near Bratislava (Slovakia), originally from the Piarist college in Podolínec, edited by Dariusz Smolarek.

The present article has been inspired by those two books, but it is not intended as either a review or a polemical text; instead, the author’s aim is to take a closer look at several issues that appeared in those works. It stems from the conviction that the composer Damian Stachowicz (1658–99) is such an outstanding figure in the history of not only Polish, but also European music, and the Podolínec collection of music-related documents so unique, at least in the history of the Piarist Order, that any relevant issues, however minor they may appear to be, are worthy of consideration, sometimes leading to them being corrected or amplified. Apart from Stachowicz, three other Piarist musicians, almost completely forgotten today, deserve our attention: Gabriel Szczawnicki (1652–1723), Kasper Pasternacki (1664–1712) and Just Caspar (1717–60). Their names cannot be found in specialist lexicons published in Poland or abroad.

Based on previously unexplored documents held in the Archivio Generale Storico delle Scuole Pie in Rome and the Archive of the Polish Province of the Piarist Order in Cracow, a number of facts have been established concerning the aforesaid musicians, above all Damian Stachowicz. In one document from 1686, he is described explicitly as “Musicam componens”. This information predates by nine years the earliest known mention of Stachowicz, and informs us not so much about this monk’s work as a teacher or as the conductor of an ensemble as about the fact that he wrote music, which of course does not mean that he started composing at this point in time. It has also been established where Stachowicz spent the years 1694–96 (previously the absence of his name in sources related to Łowicz during this period gave rise to doubts). The discovery of a manuscript from 1696 titled Provinciae Polonae familia per Domus et Residentias distributa revealed that Stachowicz spent those years at the Piarist college in Góra Kalwaria, where he had been transferred by his superiors.

However, the archive discoveries do not always dispel existing doubts and sometimes cause new uncertainties to emerge. One of the documents contains the following annotation: “Pater Damianus a Sanctissima Trinitate sequenti Anno mortuus: 1699 Die 25 Novembris”. This contradicts the officially acknowledged date for the composer’s death, 27 November 1699, which was recorded in the volume Liber suffragiorum Loviciensis. It is unclear which date is correct, because both sources were produced by direct witnesses of the composer’s passing. One very interesting source that has remained untouched by scholars until today is a volume of the Percepta et expensa of the Łowicz college for the period 1690–1720, in which Stachowicz and the ensemble he led during the last decade of the seventeenth century are mentioned many times. The ensemble regularly provided accompaniment during religious services held in the collegiate church, which enjoyed a special status, as Łowicz was a residential city of church primates. What is more, this book contains original handwritten signatures left by Stachowicz during the period between July 1697 and July 1698, when he held the function of deputy rector of the Piarist college in Łowicz.

Once a chronology of events had been established on the basis of the discovered sources, vital questions arose concerning the contributions of two other musically gifted monks about whom we previously had merely sketchy knowledge, their only known names being those they adopted on joining the order. Archives in Rome have made it possible to identify their names as Gabriel Szczawnicki and Kasper Pasternacki. The former, slightly older than Stachowicz, may have made his mark on the structure and artistic level of the ensemble of the Piarist Order based in Warsaw (comprising seven permanent members), formed in the 1680s. The latter, a little younger than Stachowicz, succeeded him as chapel master in the capital when Stachowicz was transferred to the Łowicz college in 1690. It was under Pasternacki’s tenure, four years later, that the music performed in the Piarist church in Warsaw received praise from King John III Sobieski himself.

The authors also devoted some attention to Just Caspar, quoting the key facts concerning his life and work. Most importantly, however, they pointed to a composition discovered in the archive in Modra in Slovakia and formerly kept in the Piarist college in Podolínec, titled Missa SS. Primi et Feliciani, which had been described previously as a work written by František Xaver Brixi in 1741, and copied by the Piarist monk Just Caspar in 1748. The authors provided a number of arguments to prove that this could not be correct, and that it was Caspar who wrote the composition when he took over the duties of chapel master in Warsaw in 1741. Incidentally, it is the only work about which we can say with certainty that from the time of its creation it was performed in the Piarist church in Warsaw every year on 9 June during the eighteenth century. That is because it was a special composition, devoted to the two Roman martyrs who became the patron saints of that church.

The choice of the saints was not accidental. When Ladislaus IV Vasa founded the Piarist centre in warsaw, he entrusted the monks with the two martyrs’ relics. The gift was all the more significant because both these early Christian martyrs were the patron saints of the king’s birthday. The monarch came into possession of the distinguished relics under very special circumstances. In 1624, when he was still a prince, he travelled across Italy. At an audience with Pope Urban VIII, he convinced the Pontiff to give him the sacred remains of the two saints, which had lain buried under a chapel in the church of Santo Stefano Rotondo in Rome since the seventh century. The Piarists of Warsaw kept the cult of SS Primus and Felician alive for more than two centuries, which was a unique phenomenon on a European scale, as both saints had been almost completely forgotten (as they are today), even in Rome. The fact that they were commemorated by Just Caspar with a Mass in D major not only broadens the modest legacy of this composer known to scholars, but also forces them to revise their attempts to define his profile as a composer.