Unexplored silva rerum : French printed music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the collection of a Princes Czartoryski Library in Cracow

The article is a contribution to the musical life of the Polish aristocracy in the 17th and 18th centuries on the example of French musical prints kept in the Princes Czartoryski Library in Cracow (Biblioteka Książąt Czartoryskich). The Library is very famous for its historical resources, yet the music collection remains scientifically unexplored: the only access to the content is a card catalog. Among roughly fifteen hundred musical prints and manuscripts stands out a unique group of 45 French prints, associated with the repertoire of the court in Versailles. The text presents a brief description of these resources divided into three groups in terms of genre, depicted in the tables in the annex. The prints have been presented chronologically in three separate categories, which reflect both the importance of the authors and the number of prints. Hence, the first category consists of prints of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s works (which are four, among others’ second editions of Thesée and Armide), the next category includes the works of Charles Simon Favart (five librettos and thirteen stage works), and finally the last category collects single prints of composers worked for the court of Versailles in the 17th and 18th centuries.