Music hidden in a bookbinding

I felt like listening to some old Belarusian music. And I began wondering what actually survives of the music people played several centuries ago. One such source is the “Polotsk Notebook”, a collection of seventeenth-century songs and dances with a rather unusual history.

The musical manuscript had been used to reinforce the binding of a church book. The Belarusian literary scholar Adam Maldzis recalled spotting handwritten marks through cracks in the cover at the Jagiellonian Library and suggesting they look inside. The musicologist Jerzy Gołos later studied the recovered scores — and the music found its way back to performers.

Strictly speaking, “Polotsk” is a loose label: Maldzis associated the manuscript with Astramiechava in the Brest region. In his recollection, the name stuck after conversations with musicians: everyone knew Polotsk, while Astramiechava would need explaining. He agreed so that the music would be played, then tried to restore the geographical accuracy.

The story in Maldzis’s own words.

You can hear it on Stary Olsa’s album Santa Maria, in pieces such as Ciupa, Pasterz or Tryton. These are modern interpretations of old scores, but the very possibility of hearing music that spent several centuries inside a book cover makes me happy.