Marcin Leopolita
Polish Renaissance composer
Marcin Leopolita (also Martinus Leopolita; Polish: Marcin ze Lwowa; 1537 – c. 1584) was one of the most eminent Polish composers of the 16th century. He attended the Jagiellonian University (Collegium Maius) and may have studied under the Polish composer Sebastian z Felsztyna and Jan Jelen of Tuchola.
Life
Leopolita was born in Lwów in the Kingdom of Poland (present-day Lviv, Ukraine). By the age of 20 he was a member of the royal music ensemble at the court of Zygmunt August, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. apparently becoming court composer there in 1560. After 1564, he returned to Lviv, where he lived until his death in 1589.
Few compositions by Leopolita have survived. Four motets written in Latin (Cibavit eos, Mihi autem, Resurgente Christo and Spiritus Domini) are preserved in organ tablature. Of these, Cibavit Eos can be restored with confidence to its original vocal form. All four works are known from a single source, a tablature formerly belonging to the Warsaw Musicological Society which now only survives as a photographic copy, the original having been destroyed during the Second World War.
The public source identifies “Marcin Leopolita” as polish Renaissance composer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Marcin, Leopolita and Polish.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q954206. VIAF identifies the subject as 117421354. The Library of Congress control number is no93019091. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1537, 1584, 1560 and 1564.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marcin Leopolita” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.