Capella Cracoviensis: Requiem in D minor at St Catherine's

Monday, November 1, 2021, 8:00 PM

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  • Monday, November 1, 2021, 8:00 PM
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his Requiem in D minor in 1791, however he didn’t manage to finish it before his death; the others finished it for him. The mystery surrounding the anonymous commission from an “unknown, gray stranger” and the claims that Mozart came to believe that he was writing the requiem for his own funeral make this wonderful piece all the more fascinating and emotionally stirring.
On the All Saints’ Day, Capella Cracoviensis presents Mozart’s masterpiece, one of the most beautiful mourning masses in the history of music. The concert will be rounded up by Elegischer Gesang, a short work by Ludwig van Beethoven scored for string quartet and four mixed voices, one of Beethoven's least known works and is not often performed or recorded. 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Requiem in D minor K. 626
Ludwig van Beethoven Elegischer Gesang Op. 118

Capella Cracoviensis on period instruments
Aleksandra Żakiewicz Michalina Bienkiewicz soprano
Matylda Staśto-Kotuła Zuzanna Kozłowska alto
Bartosz Gorzkowski Piotr Szewczyk tenor
Jerzy Butryn Marek Opaska bass
Zofia Wojniakiewicz Victoria Melik violin
Mariusz Grochowski viola
Monika Hartmann cello
Rafał Gorczyński double bass
Robert Šebesta Ronald Šebesta bassethorn
Robert Schlegl Harry Ries Cameron Drayton trombone
Paweł Gajewski Marian Magiera trumpet
Tomasz Sobaniec timpani
Marcin Świątkiewicz organ
Jan Tomasz Adamus conductor

Church of St Catherine and St Margaret

ul. Augustiańska 7

Here, local history is perfectly intertwined with that of the nation: its heyday and tragedies, highs and lows. From its earliest days – intermittently, though – St Catherine’s Church has been in the care of the Augustinian Order.

The church owes its origin to fairly dramatic circumstances, a tale that includes lechery, crime, a curse, and royal penance. The soft spot King Casimir the Great (Kazimierz Wielki) had for the fairer sex was denounced by the Bishop of Kraków, Jan Bodzanta, who sent his envoy in the person of the cathedral vicar, Marcin Baryczka to admonish the king about the matter. The enraged monarch had the messenger drowned in an ice-hole in the Vistula. Repenting his deed, the king later turned to Pope Clement VI to lift the anathema. The Holy Father absolved him and ordered an appropriate penance: the construction of a number of churches, including that of St Catherine and St Margaret in Kraków in the place where the body of the drowned priest surfaced. This is how the bishop’s curse indirectly contributed not only to Kraków but also to Polish sacred architecture.

The King entrusted the construction of the Gothic church (around 1343) to the Augustinian Order, which has retained custody of the building to this day. Although the construction was never finished (originally, the edifice was to be 12.5 m (41 ft) longer, the planned towers were never fully built, nor has the façade been finished), earthquakes destroyed, among others, the roof and ceiling of the chancel, and floods and fires raged in the church, it has retained its magnificent Gothic character. Adjacent to the south is a porch and the Chapel of St Monica (mother of St Augustine) in what was to be the ground floor of one of the towers, doubling as a place of prayer of the Augustinian nuns from the convent on the other side of Skałeczna Street. The covered walkway that connects the two structures provides a characteristically picturesque accent.

The process of restoring the church, terminated after the third partition of Poland and designed among others for military storehouses, began in the mid-19th century, and – with only short breaks – continues into our times.

Linked to St Catherine’s is the story of a Kraków monk, Isaiah (Izajasz) Boner. Allegedly, the power of this servant of God (the process of his beatification is still far from completed) is capable of unmasking women of easy virtue. For it so happened that when the “shameless wenches” visiting the grave of Isaiah stood on the slab of his grave, a tremor ran through it, which is how the saint disclosed their profession.

In our times, members of the congregation visiting the church on the 22nd day of each month are often seen carrying a rose that they lay down by the sculpture and relics of St Rita, the patron saint of hopeless cases, for whom a rose would always blossom (even in winter) in the garden of the Convent of the Augustinian Nuns in Cascia, bringing relief from suffering and illness.

Be sure to see:

  • late-renaissance tomb of Spytek Jordan in southern aisle
  • spacious cloisters with 15th and 16th-century paintings and epitaphs
  • Our Lady of Consolation, a 16th century mural, one of Poland’s oldest miraculous images of the Blessed Virgin (the chapel in the cloister)

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