Ukrainian Baroque Music
Ukrainian Baroque Music
Orthodox tradition rebirths Renaissance Polychoral Writing
The Baroque period in music history opened an ‘anthropocentric’ era. Man became the central fact of the universe. Compared to the Middle Ages, everything changed in the choral music of Ukraine. The medieval soulful melos based on the concept of ‘Word-soul-breath’ gave way to affect, to passions and emotions. The restrained ascetic sound changed to bright dynamics with contrasts in timbre and texture. The monody of unison male voices was replaced by magnificent polyphony. Eight, twelve, sixteen, and even twenty-four voice parts were not uncommon for choral music in this period. The addressee of the singing changed. The music was addressed not so much to God, the aim of medieval monody, as to Man, who was to be excited, impressed, captivated by the music.
These features of Baroque music were particularly relevant to Ukrainian seventeenth century culture. Hierarchs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church faced the need to reform the liturgical rite to make it relevant to the secularization underway in order successfully to compete with Catholic expansion. Orthodox tradition does not permit the use of musical instruments in church services. Catholic tradition does so to support worship, the organ being a good example. The use of instruments in Catholic services introduced elements of secularity and the emergence of concert practice. Unable to use musical instruments, Orthodox priests turned to polychoral music in the first half of the sixteenth century. This innovation, in which choirs were divided into groups singing individually, alternately or together, is attributed to the musical director of the Padua Cathedral, Ruffino Bartolucci. The style was perfected by the Venetian composers Andrea Gabrieli and his more famous nephew Giovanni, and was exploited by many composers of the period: the Italians Girolamo Giacobbi, Ludovico Viadana; the Germans Hans Leo Hassler, Michael Praetorius, Samuel Scheidt, Heinrich Schütz; and the Poles Marcin Mielczewski and Jacek Różycki.
The new polychoral culture became known as the partesnyi style Ukraine, ‘singing in parts’. A large body of manuscripts in this style has survived to date. Kyiv collections presently include over six hundred polychoral-partesnyi compositions. The catalogue of the Lviv Brotherhood includes 372 such works. And many compositions in this style are found in music libraries outside of Ukraine.
Polychoral compositions, e.g., motets and choral concertos, were musically written using Kyiv square note notation. Unlike the anonymous medieval monody, they evidenced authorship, despite a great proportion of them being anonymous. Ukrainian composers in this style include Mykola Dyletsky, Simeon Pekalytsky, Ivan Domaratsky, Herman Levitsky, Havalevych, Koliadchyna, Davydovych, Theodosius the Luminous, and others.
The most famous Ukrainian composer of the Baroque period was Mykola Dyletsky of Kyiv (c. 1630 – after 1680). He received an excellent education from the Jesuit academy in Vilnius. His numerous works include a liturgy for four voices, and two eight-voice liturgies; four and eight voice polychoral concertos: Come, people, Thy Image we Praise, Profess, Praise, He entered the Church, the communion hymn Body of Christ, and the monumental, multi-part polychoral composition Resurrection Canon. In addition to being a consummate composer in the polychoral style that demonstrates his phenomenal talent and European level of musical education, Dyletsky was a prominent musical theorist. He was the author of the first theoretical music treatise in Eastern Europe, entitled Musical Grammar, which exists in several edited versions and languages. Many music experts view this as the most valuable theoretical work appearing in Europe between the works of Salinas (sixteenth century) and Rameau (eighteenth century). Dyletsky’s Musical Grammar generalized extensive practical experience with the new polychoral partesnyi style, laid the foundations of his aesthetics, rhetoric, musical composition (in particular, the imitative polyphonic technique), and offered practical advice to both singers and composers.
Information on other Ukrainian polychoral composers is extremely fragmentary. For example, we know very little of Simeon Pekalytsky: his approximate year of birth (1630); his studies in Kyiv, Lviv, and either Ostroh or Lutsk; service in the choir of Chernihiv Archbishop Lazarus Baranovych; and position of Choir Director in Lviv and Moscow. His Liturgy and the polychoral concerto Your Gracious Spirit have been found. Old catalogues refer to other works of his (Liturgy for eight voices). Biographical information on other major Ukrainian polychoral composers like Ivan Domaratsky and Herman Levytsky has not been found to date. Nevertheless, scores of their polychoral concertos have been discovered in the autograph manuscript archives of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. Their deciphering is presently underway.
The Ukrainian Baroque polychoral concerto rightfully occupies a significant place not only in the Ukrainian national musical culture but also in European musical history, where it represents a significant step towards the formation of a new European musical culture. Ukrainian musical culture also played a fundamental in the development of Russian music. It was Ukrainian musicians who brought the polychoral style to Muscovy in the eighteenth century and expanded Russia’s horizon to European music. Many Ukrainian musicians, singers, church choir directors, composers in the polychoral style became the foundation for court chapel singers. Annually, the Hlukhiv School of Music (Chernihiv) sent ten professionally trained singers to St. Petersburg. This was not surprising. The previously noted Syrian Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo reported while traveling in Ukraine “The singing of Cossacks gladdens the soul and heals it from longing because their singing is pleasing. It comes from the heart.”
(The International Federation for Choral Music A Millennial Tradition: The Choral Art of Ukraine)
Performance: Kyiv Chamber Choir and Mykola Hobdych
Kyiv Chamber Choir was on tour in Denmark and Norway in the summer of 2022.
Here is a film of one of the concerts in its entirety, enjoy!