Elert Piotr, *Frombork †1653 Warsaw, Polish musician (violist, singer), composer, and printer. He came from Frombork in Warmia. He belonged to the court of Prince John Casimir as a musician from at least 1633; in 1638 he accompanied him on an unfortunate trip to Spain, where he was arrested along with him. In 1640, Elert was part of the delegation sent to secure the prince’s release; he is remembered for the ruse he used to obtain an audience with the prisoner from Cardinal Richelieu. Elert worked in the royal band until his death, primarily as a violist. In 1641, he took Krakow citizenship and married Maria Elżbieta, daughter of the Krakow printer Piotrowczyk. In 1643, he obtained a privilege from the king to run a printing house in Warsaw. There, he published, among other things, the texts of the last two drammi per musica performed on the royal stage, some of M. Scacchi’s writings, and Paolo Piazza’s panegyric La Fama Reale overo Il Principe Trionfante… (1647), which for a long time was mistakenly considered by historians unfamiliar with the original to be the work of Eler himself and treated as the text of the first Polish dramma per musica. M. Scacchi included Eler’s 3-voice canon in Cribrum musicum (1643).
Literature: A. Szweykowska Legenda o operze P. Elerta „La Fama Reale”, “Muzyka” 1970 no. 2; B. Przybyszewska-Jarmińska Muzyczne dwory polskich Wazów, Warsaw 2007.
