Gomółka, Mikołaj (EN)

Gomółka, Gomulka, Gomolca, Mikołaj, *circa 1535 Sandomierz, †after 30 April 1591, Polish composer and instrumentalist. He was the son of Sandomierz burghers, Tomasz and Katarzyna Gomółka; from 1545 he was a boy singer among the pages of King Sigismund Augustus. In 1548, he began learning music with J. Klaus, one of the kings’ flautists, who played woodwind instruments. From then on he belonged to this ensemble, initially as a student (1548–50), and from 1558 as a fully fledged instrumentalist; he probably learned not only how to play flutes and reed instruments, because at that time he was included in the group called “fistulatores Itali,” whose members were musicians playing stringed instruments and organs. During his studies, he stayed at the royal court in Kraków, Vilnius, Knyszyn, and in 1552 also in Piotrków (during the Sejm), Gdańsk and probably with Prince Albrecht Hohenzollern in Königsberg. He left the band of Sigismund Augustus on 16 August 1563; he may have been granted paid leave in the last two years. During his stay at the court, he had to come into contact with such composers as Wacław of Szamotuły, M. Leopolita and W. Bakfark.

In 1566, Gomółka returned to Sandomierz. There is no information about his musical activity in this city, but documents have been preserved showing that he was active in the financial field and performed various functions related to the judiciary. In 1567 and again in 1568, he was elected one of seven jurors; in 1572, he was appointed to the prominent position of deputy city mayor, and in 1578, he was active in the castle court. The last news about Gomółka’s stay in Sandomierz comes from this year. Between January 1567 and May 1570, he married Jadwiga, the daughter of Tarnów councillor Tomasz Kuszmierzowicz, and most likely they had a son, Michał, who, next to Mikołaj, was a musician at the court of J. Zamoyski.

In 1580, Gomółka probably stayed in Krakow and participated in the work on publishing the psalter. He probably was the court musician of the Bishop of Krakow, P. Myszkowski, to whom he dedicated his work. In any case, the documents indicate that he was in Krakow in 1586 and that in 1587, he left the service at the bishop’s court. Then, together with three partners, he started mining exploration near Muszyna. In June 1590 or earlier, he became a musician at the court of Chancellor Zamoyski in Krakow. He stayed there until 30 April 1591, which is the last known date in his biography.

The publication of Gomółka’s only known work contains 150 four-voice pieces to the texts of the Polish version of the Psalter according to J. Kochanowski. The composer created them – as it stems from the dedication poem included in the print – fully consciously, intended for common music-making, which implied the simplicity of the musical arrangement, excluding larger sizes of the work and extensive polyphony. Therefore, imitation does not appear as a formative factor in any of the psalms. However, unlike typical polyphonic Reformation psalters and hymnals, both Evangelical and Huguenot, Gomółka’s works are not based on cantus firmus. Chord structures prevail in the compositions; however, upon closer contact with the work, it turns out that they are generally conceived in an extremely polyphonic manner. This is evidenced by, for example, imitations that sometimes appear, either overt or with blurred clarity by the assignment of different syllables to the same sounds of the imitated phrases. Especially when the rhythm is not very varied and the words appear simultaneously in all voices, this creates the effect of chording. Another manifestation of linear thinking are the sometimes emerging consonances of increased unisons, fifths and sixths, as well as decreased and increased octaves, resulting from the logic of leading each voice.

Despite the lack of a cantus firmus, not all melodic material of the free 4-voice comes from the composer’s invention. M. Perz lists – based on incomplete comparative research – 97 psalms in which the beginning of Canto or Tenor or both voices is a quite faithful quotation of melodies known from earlier sources. There are references to songs preserved in Polish, Czech, German, French and Dutch hymnals, sometimes with the text of an appropriate psalm (e.g. Psalm 103) or with a text similar in content (among the melodic patterns, there is, for example, a carol popular in 16^th-century Poland Dies est laetitiae or the flagship Protestant chant Ein feste Burg, known also with Polish text), however, after a few notes of quotation or paraphrase, Gomółka composes a continuation different from the pattern.

Melodic allusions to original texts, when the content of the text is similar to the content of a given psalm, are one of the elements of a crucial and characteristic phenomenon of Melodie, which consists in subordinating the musical arrangement to the content and expressive layer of the verbal text. Gomółka is very careful in this respect, and he uses both means common in 16^th-century music and more individual ideas related to specific word phrases. The first includes the selection of the mode. As M. Perz’s research has shown, joyful psalms are generally in the Ionic and Mixolydian modes, with only one Doric mode and no Phrygian mode at all. However, most of the dramatic and sad psalms are in the Doric mode, all Phrygian works are included here, and the Ionic and Mixolydian modes appear only once. This understanding of the Phrygian, Ionic and Mixolydian modes is very typical for the 16^th century, while the treatment of the Doric mode proves Gomółka’s modern feeling, because this mode was considered rather cheerful within the modal system, and only after changing into minor did it acquire – in opposition to major – sad character. Other commonly used means present in the Melodie include associating a sad word with a lower register, slower tempo or with a greater accumulation of dissonances, illustrating e.g. power, seriousness, weight with larger values, and concepts related to movement – with smaller ones, illustrating words with the rising or falling of melodic lines. Gomółka sometimes composes clearly dance-like music to accompany joyful psalms.

The songs in Melodie vary in value, some of them seem to have been written in a hurry, hence the statements quoted here cannot be extended to the entire work. Nevertheless, M. Perz provides several examples that indicate that in texts about perfection or singing, Gomółka used richer polyphonic structures within the framework described. Here, imitations are most common (e.g. Psalm 75, in which the perfection of the musical structure is explained by the perfection expressed in the words “men tell of your wonderful deeds” [“i Twoje cuda światu opowiemy”]). Imitations are also used to illustrate not the entire content, but individual phrases, such as “you start” [“zaczniecie”] (Psalm 96) or “receives words” [“odbiera słowa”] (Psalm 45b). On the contrary, with the text “Every fool says in his heart” [“Głupi mówi w sercu swoim”] (Psalm 14), Gomółka also composed “stupid” music, which is reflected in a particularly simple (“vulgar”) construction of the whole, a narrowing of the ambitus of each voice, an exceptionally large mismatch between musical and verbal accents, and the introduction a rare scale marking in the Melodies, the interpretation of which, especially in combination with the pauses appearing at the beginning in all voices, does not give a satisfactory result. This last compositional move shows that Gomółka also used effects from the field of “eye music” (Augenmusik) in his work. This may also partially include the illustration of the text “He inclined to me” [“a Pan mię obaczył”] by bringing the highest voice above the alto after the previous, unique in Melodie, crossing of these voices with the words “I waited patiently” [“Czekałem z cierpliwością”] (Psalm 40). This example shows how individual and original solutions Gomółka used to closely combine music with text. Similar madrigals, commonly used or ingeniously invented, were noticed by M. Perz in almost all of Gomółka’s psalms. The fact that the basis of the entire work was the concept of expressing and illustrating text used in other types of music makes the Melodie a unique phenomenon among European psalters.

This compatibility of the music with the text concerns the initial fragments of Kochanowski’s poetry, because in the case of the strophic form, the most common one, the composer prepared only the first verse (the subsequent ones, due to the same number of lines and syllables, can be sung with the same music), and in the case of the ‘blank verse,’ he wrote music to the first two- or four-line, depending on the natural division of poetry. In this situation, Gomółka could not solve the problems resulting from Kochanowski’s use of enjambment between subsequent stanzas or – in the case of blank verse – between appropriate lines. The decisive cadence ending each piece causes the breakdown of the syntactic and logical unit of the text. However, the composer tried to take into account enjambments within the initial fragment selected for development, generally grading – as M. Perz showed – the closing force of various cadence phrases depending on both the form and content of the text. Due to the irregularity of accents in Kochanowski’s psalms, these accents very often do not coincide with the musical accents. This applies especially to the later stanzas, but also in the initial fragments to which the music was composed, the degree of correspondence between verbal and musical accents varies greatly. It seems that the composer sometimes used this element to illustrate the text (cf. notes on Psalm 14).

The form in which Gomółka’s work was published is not very typical. On each page of the print, there are notations of fragments (of the same duration) of the melody of four voices above each other. Due to this combination of voices, it is not a proper choir book (Chorbuch); it is also not a score, because within the section of the composition on the page, there are no verticals between the appropriate note values. It seems that the form of publication, rare in the 16^th century, was also chosen in line with the psalter’s intended use for performers with little musical education. The opinion expressed in earlier musicological literature that the Melodie – despite Gomółka’s care – did not find many recipients among the composer’s contemporaries, has become outdated since minor differences were observed among the eight known copies of the work, which indicate the existence of two editions. The second one could have been published in 1580 or – contrary to the information on the title page – a little later, as there are known cases of such dealing by J. Januszowski. The melodies must therefore have gained some popularity if they were reissued. This popularity is not reflected in 16^th-century literature, but from the mid-18^th century, and especially from the second quarter of the 19^th century, Gomółka’s Melodie is considered a valuable monument of Old Polish culture. Over time, the composer’s name grew to become a symbol of early Polish music; the national character of the work was often mentioned. Also now, with greater knowledge of the reference material, Gomółka’s psalms are highly appreciated by both researchers and the wider concert audience.

Literature: S. Przyłęcki Nagrobek Mikołaja Gomółki w Jazłowcu, “Gazeta Polska” 1828 No. 339 and “Rozmaitości” (supplement to “Gazeta Lwowska”) 1828 No. 49; A. Poliński Mikołaj Gomółka i jego psalmy, “Echo Muzyczne” IV, 1880 No. 12–16; Z. Jachimecki Psalmy Mikołaja Gomółki, in: Wpływy włoskie w muzyce polskiej, Kraków 1911; A. Chybiński Mikołaj Gomółka i jego psalmy (1580) w świetle najnowszych badań, “Miesięcznik Kościelny” IV, 1912 No. 11; J. Reiss Melodie psalmowe Mikołaja Gomółki 1580, Kraków 1912, German translation Nikolaus Gomólka und seine Psalmen-Melodien, “Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft” XIII, 1911–12 book 6; H. Opieński La musique polonaise, Paris 1918 (contains 4 Gomółka’s psalms); A. Chybiński W kwestii przeznaczenia psalmów Mikołaja Gomółki, “Muzyka” VI, 1929 No. 10; R. Koseła Miejsce urodzenia i rodzice Mikołaja Gomółki, “Kurier Literacko-Naukowy” XIV, 1937 No. 34 (supplement to “Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny” 1937 No. 226); B. Horodyski Sławny lutnista wielkiego kanclerza, “Teka Zamoyska” II, 1939 No. 2; Z. Lissa and J. Chomiński Muzyka polskiego Odrodzenia, Warsaw 1953; I. Bełza Istorija polskoj muzykalnoj kultury, vol. 1, Moscow 1954 (contains 1 Gomółka’s psalm); G. Reese Music in the Renaissance, New York 1954, revised 1959 (contains 1 Gomółka’s psalm); Z. M. Szweykowski Kultura wokalna XVI-wiecznej Polski, Kraków 1957 (contains Gomółka’s psalm); H. Feicht Dodatkowe materiały do tez referatu prof. prof. Z. Lissy i J. Chomińskiego, in: Odrodzenie w Polsce, vol. 5, Warsaw 1958; Z. M. Szweykowski O Mikołaju Gomółce parę faktów, “Ruch Muzyczny” V, 1961 No. 6; M. Perz Die Vor- und Frühgeschichte der Partitur in Polen, in: Festschrift der Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Graz, ed. E. Marckhl, Graz 1963; K. Hławiczka Melodie Wacława z Szamotuł, Cypriana Bazylika i Mikołaja Gomółki w kancjonale brzeskim, “Muzyka” XIII, 1968 No. 1 and 2; M. Perz Mikołaj Gomółka. Monografia, Warsaw 1969, Kraków 2^nd ed. 1981; M. Perz Czterysta lat Gomółkowych „Melodii”, 1580–1980, czyli o początkach polskiej deklamacji muzycznej, “Muzyka” XXV, 1980 No. 3; M. Perz Melodie na Psałterz polski Mikołaja Gomółki. Interpretacje i komentarze, Kraków 1988; M. Perz Sztuka „sekretnej chromatyki” w „Melodiach” Mikołaja Gomółki, “Muzyka” XXXIII, 1988 No. 4; K. Morawska Renesans. 1500-1600, Warsaw 1994; T. Jasiński Polska barokowa retoryka muzyczna, Lublin 2006; M. Perz Bergamasca w „Melodiach” Mikołaja Gomółki (1580)?, “Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny” VI, 2006; P. Ceremużyńska and F. Reyes Ferrón „Audite haec, omnes Gentes!” Melodies for the Polish Psalter by Mikołaj Gomółka to the Jan Kochanowski’s Psalter translation. A Polish and European work, in: Word of God, words of men. Translations, inspirations, transmissions of the Bible in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Renaissance, ed. Joanna Pietrzak-Thébault, Göttingen 2019; T. Jasiński Beztekstowy przekaz anonimowego „Psalmu Dawida” w tabulaturze organowej z Kroż. Rekonstrukcja warstwy słownej i próba atrybucji, “Muzyka” LXIII, 2021 No. 3.