Andrzej Rohaczewski

There are no secured biographical data for Rohaczewski; the only thing we know for certain is the fact that he was a composer and organist at the court of Albert Stanisław Radziwiłł at Olyka and Nieswież active during the first thirty years of the 17th century. His "best" time may have been around 1620. Only few of his compositions remain, two of those in the Peplin Organ Tablature compiled in the 1620s. One of those is the motet "Crucifixus surrexit" (He, who was crucified, rose from the death...) for nine voices in two choirs of four and five voices each. The other piece is the "Canzon a 4" from the sixth volume of the Tabulatura Peplińska. The style of said piece suggests that it is a chamber composition. Most likely for strings, that was registered only in the organ notation, as was quite common for many other chamber works at that time as well. The formal structure of the small piece in question is typical for the early Baroque canzona in Italian style: it is ABA, with the outside parts employing imitational technique and the central part the chord technique. It is written in the concertato style with a juxtaposition of the two upper and lower instruments. This canzona, together with similar works by Adam Jarzębski, is the earliest example of such type of music in Poland.

Information supplied by Monika Fahrnberger
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