The first monograph of the life and oeuvre of Marcin Mielczewski (d. 1651) presents the best known Polish composer of seventeenth-century Europe. During the 1990s, while exploring a newly accessible collection of music manuscripts from Silesia (the Sammlung Bohn) held in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, the author found 37 compositions signed M.M., which she ascribed to Mielczewski. This discovery, representing more than half the composer's known legacy, fuelled a considerable rise in interest in Mielczewski's output among musicologists and musicians. In this book, the current state of knowledge about Marcin Mielczewski's life and work is presented within the context of the musical patronage of King Ladislaus IV Vasa of Poland and his brother, Bishop Charles Ferdinand.

Barbara Przybyszewska-Jarminska is Professor and Head of the Department of Musicology at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Her main area of research is the music of the late Renaissance and Baroque, especially in the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania.

Contents: Musical patronage of King Ladislaus IV Vasa of Poland and Bishop Charles Ferdinand Vasa - Research history of Marcin Mielczewski (d. 1651) - Mielczewski's biography - Mielczewski's music and the repertoire of the Polish Vasa chapels - Issues relating to the performance of Mielczewski's compositions.