Cyprian Bazylik

1535-1600

As with so many from the earlier years of classical music the exact dates of Cyprian Bazylik’s life are unclear. Certainly he was born and educated in the Polish town of Sieradz. He was supposedly born in 1535 but is known to have received his degree from the University of Krakow in 1551.

He was either a child prodigy or born a little earlier than 1535. Sadly, we cannot be certain which option to take!

Bazylik was not just a talented composer, he was renowned as a writer and poet as well. He showed a keen interest in Calvinism from an early age, which perhaps explains the haunting simplicity of his compositions.

As was common in that era he travelled the courts, in Cyprian’s case, of Eastern Europe picking up positions and sinecures along the way.

By 1557 he already held a post in the Chancellery of the Polish King Sigismund II Augustus before moving the following year to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (by then Poland and Lithuania were allied in a Commonwealth) to take up the position of court musician and poet at the court of the wonderfully named Mikolaj Radziwill the Black. Part of the reason may have been that Radziwill was a prominent supporter of Protestantism.

By 1569 he again pops up as secretary to the Polish nobleman Olbracht Łaski and in the same year he appears to have been the owner of a printing and publishing business in the city of Brest specialising in Clavinist tracts.

Little is known of his later life and even the date of his death, generally accepted as 1600, is uncertain.

He is known to have published a number of musical works, mostly in his youth, but very few have survived and still fewer are performed today.

You can hear one of them below: