Guest
Vocals and arrangement by Farya Faraji, the painting is “Battle of Grunwald“ by Jan Matejko. Bogurodzica is a Polish, medieval Catholic hymn composed somewhere between the 10th and 13th centuries, with its likely author being Saint Adalbert of Prague. Though originally a liturgical hymn, it soon evolved into a battle chant used by Polish warriors, and was chanted on the 15th of July 1410 during the Battle of Grunwald by Polish knights allied to Lithuania prior to their engagement against the Teutonic Order. Since then, it was used for centuries as a battle hymn. With this in mind, I decided to arrange and orchestrate the hymn with both aspects in mind; both as a liturgical one and a battle one. I tried to go for as historically accurate a rendition as possible for an early 14th century Polish palette: all the instruments were used at the time in Poland and are all used, to my knowledge, in accordance with historical accuracy. Central among the instruments are the hurdy-gurdy, called Lira korbowa in Polish, and the bagpipe, called Dudy or Kobza. Both are some of the most commonly heard medieval instruments in the region, and the hurdy-gurdy in Central and Eastern Europe indeed survived its Western European counterparts past the 18th century, still being used to some degree as far as the mid 1850's in countries like Poland and Ukraine whilst its use had largely died out by the 1700's in Western Europe. Another peculiar instrument is the Jaw harp, which I've heard time and time again in medieval reconstructions of Carpathian, Ukrainian, Polish and other countries' music in the region. Much of the basis for my choice of instrumentation was the Polish band Jar, which I recommend you check out if you're interested in medieval Polish music. Lyrics in Old Polish: Bogurodzica dziewica, Bogiem sławiena Maryja! U twego syna Gospodzina Matko zwolena*, Maryja, Zyszczy nam, spuści nam! Kyrie eleison! *Note that I changed the melodic phrasing of the words “matko zwolena“ for my own interpretation, but most versions won't phrase it that way. Many other words were phrased differently for my own interpretation, keep that in mind. Lyrics in English: Virgin, Mother of God, God-famed Mary! Ask Thy Son, our Lord, God-named Mary, To have mercy upon us and hand it over to us! Kyrie eleison! (in Greek)
