Zygmunt Noskowski —composer, teacher, conductor and journalist—was one of the leading figures in Polish music during the late 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. He was a teacher of all the important Polish composers of the next generation, and is considered today to be the first Polish symphonic composer.

He was closely linked to the choral scene his whole adult life. Before studying with Kiel in Berlin, he led singing lessons for the advanced students of the Warsaw Institute for the Deaf, Mute, and Blind. His first responsible director's position was the leadership of the Bodan Choral Society in Constance (1876-80), performing great oratorical works such as Haydn's The Seasons along with his own compositions such as the cantata Der Heldentod.

Returning to Warsaw in 1880, Noskowski came to be a well-known and esteemed musician. Among many undertakings, an important place should be given to his work with the Warsaw Music Society, which he headed from 1880 to 1902. For more than 20 years he led the Music Society's choral program, directing the mixed choir, the children's choir, and the men's choir, ending his choral directing career only when he retired from the leadership of the Music Society.

His music. Unfortunately, Noskowski's choral music has become difficult to access. Although most of his music was published during his lifetime, some posthumously, it did not continue in print beyond the original editions. His orchestral and stage works are the least available today. The smaller music forms—solo voice, choral, piano works—were more often published, by Polish and some German houses, by independent printings, and in journal supplements, but his sacred music had never been fully published until the collection by Triangiel Publications (Warsaw), Zygmunt Noskowski: Choralna muzyka religijna, edited by Marcin Lukasz Mazur (upon which our North American editions are based). His most extended sacred choral work (see our octavo CQ2308), the Veni Creator (in F), was enclosed in his manual on counterpoint published in 1907 (it was omitted from the second edition). In 1926 the Music Society brought out his much shorter Veni Creator (in E flat) for mixed choir (this octavo), and he composed a third Veni Creator (in D flat) for male choir (our CQ2306). The present editions are the first of his sacred choral music since World War II.

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