Polish organ tablatures include some of the earliest and most important tablature

Organ tablature

Organ tablature is a form of musical notation used by the north German Baroque organ school, although there are also forms of organ tablature from other countries such as Italy, Spain, Poland, and England...

 sources of instrumental music in Europe. Particularly well-known is the Jan z Lublina

Jan z Lublina

Jan z Lublina, or Joannis de Lublin, was a Polish composer and organist who lived in the first half of the 16th century. Not much is known about his life - he was a member of the Order of Canons Regular of the Lateran, circa 1540 he was possibly the organist at the convent in Kraśnik, near Lublin...

 tablature, which dates from mid-16th century and contains some 250 pieces. Most Polish organ tablatures use the German form of notation. The genres vary from all kinds of liturgical music to dances and vocal intabulations. This article presents a partial list of Polish organ tablatures, in chronological order.

Medieval

• Augustinians' tablature from Żagań
  Zagan
  Zagan may refer to:*Zagan - a demon in the Ars Goetia*Żagań - a town in west Poland...
  
   (Sagan) (ca. 1425; also known as Sagan Keyboard MS, Sagan fragment, etc.)

A single leaf containing a Gloria

Mass (music)

The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...

 fragment. The piece is divided into three parts: Et in terra pax, Benedictimus te, and Glorificamus te. The omission of other movements is evidence for early alternatim

Alternatim

Alternatim refers to a technique of liturgical musical performance. A specific part of the ordinary of the Mass would be divided into versets. Each verset would be performed antiphonally by two groups of singers, giving rise to polyphonic settings of half of the text. One of these groups may...

 practice. All of the music is in two voices, the lower voice outlining the chant (Gloria ad lib.I of the Vatican Edition), the upper voice based on octave doubling of the chant tones, interspersed with ornamental figures somewhat similar to those in Codex Faenza.

Renaissance

• Tablature by Jan z Lublina
  Jan z Lublina
  Jan z Lublina, or Joannis de Lublin, was a Polish composer and organist who lived in the first half of the 16th century. Not much is known about his life - he was a member of the Order of Canons Regular of the Lateran, circa 1540 he was possibly the organist at the convent in Kraśnik, near Lublin...
  
   (1537–48)

Contains a large treatise on composition, modelled on Hans Buchner

Hans Buchner

Hans Buchner was an important German organist and composer....

's Fundamentum, but surpassing it by greater number of explanations and musical examples. The treatise is followed by some 250 pieces, covering numerous genres from liturgical pieces to dances, intabulations of motets, and a number of untitled and/or undidentifiable works.

• Cracow tablature ("Nicolaus Cracoviensis
  Nicolaus Cracoviensis
  Nicolaus Cracoviensis was a 16th-century Polish composer.Not much is known about his life. His name appears in the Kraków University archives as organist at the Kraków court. The biggest part of his compositions is contained in two great Polish organ tablatures: by Jan z Lublina and the Cracow...
  
  ") (1548; also known as the Holy Ghost tablature. Original lost)

Contains 101 pieces, most of which are intabulations of vocal works by well-known composers. Some compositions are also found in the Lublin tablature. Unique items include several preludes, liturgical pieces, and three settings of Polish church songs.

• Łowicz tablature (also known as Martin Leopolita tablature) (ca. 1580; original lost)

Contains 75 liturgical pieces: 47 introits, 8 sequences, 12 pieces for the Mass ordinary (including a group of four, titled Missa solenne), and 8 Magnificat settings.

• Gdańsk
  Gdansk
  Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...
  
   (Danzig) tablature (1591)
• Toruń
  Torun
  Toruń is an ancient city in northern Poland, on the Vistula River. Its population is more than 205,934 as of June 2009. Toruń is one of the oldest cities in Poland. The medieval old town of Toruń is the birthplace of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus....
  
   (Thorn) tablature (by Johannes Fischer of Morąg
  Morag
  Morag may refer to:* Morag , a lake monster reported to inhabit Loch Morar in Scotland* Morąg , a city in Warmia-Masuria, Poland...
  
  ) (1591–1604)

Contains motet intabulations and fantasias.

• Samogitia
  Samogitia
  Samogitia is one of the five ethnographic regions of Lithuania. It is located in northwestern Lithuania. Its largest city is Šiauliai/Šiaulē. The region has a long and distinct cultural history, reflected in the existence of the Samogitian dialect...
  
  n tablature from Kroże
  Kražiai
  Kražiai is a town in Lithuania, located in the Kelmė district municipality, between Varniai and Raseiniai , on the Kražantė river. The old town of Kražiai is an archeological and urban monument....
  
   (also known as Adam of Wągrowiec
  Adam of Wagrowiec
  Adam from Wągrowiec , was a Polish composer and organist, as well as a Cistercian monk in Wągrowiec closter. He was born in Margonin. He was famous during his life, and was invited to inspect a new organ in Gniezno cathedral on 17 March 1620...
  
   tablature) (ca. 1618)

Includes 23 pieces by Adam of Wągrowiec: fantasias, ricercar

Ricercar

A ricercar is a type of late Renaissance and mostly early Baroque instrumental composition. The term means to search out, and many ricercars serve a preludial function to "search out" the key or mode of a following piece...

es, and liturgical paraphrases.

• Oliwa
  Oliwa
  Oliwa, also Oliva is one of the quarters of Gdańsk. From east it borders Przymorze and Żabianka, from the north Sopot and from the south with the districts of Strzyża, VII Dwór and Brętowo, while from the west with Matarnia and Osowa...
  
   tablature, the 1st (1619), another name is the Braunsberg (Braniewo
  Braniewo
  Braniewo is a town in northeastern Poland, in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, with a population of 18,068 . It is the capital of Braniewo County...
  
  ) tablature

Baroque

• Pelplin
  Pelplin
  Pelplin is a small town in Tczew County, Pomeranian Voivodship, Poland. Population: 9,993 . The former Pelplin Abbey is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pelplin, and the abbey church is now Pelpin Cathedral.It is located at around ....
  
   tablature (1620–80)

Contains 797 transcriptions of vocal works by various composers, and 91 keyboard compositions by Polish, Italian (Merula), German, Austrian, Netherlandish, Spanish and English (Morley, Philips) composers. Furthermore, the tablature also includes twelve organ chorales by Scheidemann, Tunder, and others, added in the 2nd half of the 17th century.

• Vilnius
  Vilnius
  Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
  
   tablature (also known as Sapieha
  Sapieha
  The Sapieha is a Polish-Lithuanian princely family descending from the medieval boyars of Smolensk. The family acquired great influence in the sixteenth century.-History:...
  
   album) (ca. 1626)
• Ostromeczew tablature (also known as Polotsk notebook, or Polotsk tablature, or silva rerum) (ca. 1640)
• Warsaw
  Warsaw
  Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
  
   tablature (ca. 1680) - the whole tablature was recorded by Rostislaw Wygranienko
  Rostislaw Wygranienko
  Rostislaw Wygranienko is a Polish concert organist, pianist and musicologist of Ukrainian origin. In 2003 he graduated from the Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy, Warsaw , where he studied with Joachim Grubich...
  
   in 2006.

English

• Apel, Willi
  Willi Apel
  Willi Apel was a German-American musicologist.Apel was born in Konitz, West Prussia. He studied mathematics from 1912 to 1914, and then again after World War I from 1918 to 1922, in various universities in Weimar Germany. Throughout his studies, he had an interest in music and taught piano lessons...
  
  . 1972. The History of Keyboard Music to 1700. Translated by Hans Tischler. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21141-7. Originally published as Geschichte der Orgel- und Klaviermusik bis 1700 by Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel.
• Inski, W. M.. 1964. The Cracow Tablature (diss., Indiana University)
• White, John R.. 1963. The Tablature of Johannes of Lublin, MD, xvii (1963), pp. 137–62.

Polish

• Barbara Brzezińska. Repertuar polskich tabulatur organowych z pierwszej polowy XVI wieku (Kraków, 1987).
• Gołos, Jerzy. 1972. Polskie organy i muzyka organowa. Instytut Wydawniczy PAX.
• Morawska, Katarzyna. 1998a. Historia muzyki polskiej: Średniowiecze, Sutkowski Edition Warsaw, 1998. ISBN 83-900790-7-0
• Morawska, Katarzyna. 1998b. Historia muzyki polskiej: Renesans, Sutkowski Edition Warsaw, 1998. ISBN 83-900790-2-X
• Poźniak, P. (ed.). 2004. Album Sapieżyńskie. Sub Sole Sarmatiae, Volume 9: Wileńska tabulatura organowa z XVII wieku obrazami żywota św. Franciszka zdobiona. Musica Iagellonica, Kraków. ISBN 83-7099-133-5