ABSTRACT

Marenzio, as a musician in the service of the cardinal nephew Cinzio Aldobrandini, resided in the Vatican, regularly visited the papal court and had close ties with Diego de Campo, the pope's private valet. In the early months of 1596 Sigismund III transferred his court from Krakow to Warsaw, where the Papal Nuncio complained that 'the houses are not the best in the world'. Despite the detailed researches carried out by Anna Szweykowska into Sigismund III's musical cappella, no documents from the Polish archives appear to name Marenzio explicitly. Anna Szweykowska can be credited with drawing attention to a valuable testimony concerning Marenzio taken from a Polish translation of Mucante's diary edited by Julian Niemcewicz and published in 1822. From other of Mucante's annotations we learn that the Polish aristocracy enjoyed musical entertainments during banquets. Unfortunately Mucante does not explicitly state whether this Te Deum is the work of Marenzio.