Yevgeniya Ignatenko

The idea behind this year’s partes laboratory «Musica Sacrа Ukraina» is to present the picture of historic development of the Ukrainian partes singing. The programme includes 10 concerts by Mykola Dyletsky, presented last year at a concert in St. Sophia Cathedral of Kyiv – one 8-voice, the rest – 4-voice, along with three anonymous 12-voice concerts from the Kyiv collection, kept at the Manuscript’s Institute of the Volodymyr Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine. All the 12-voice concerts decoded and scored by Yevgeniya Ignatenko will be performed for the first time. Hence, the presentation will cover:

– Compositions by different authors – Mykola Dyletsky and three anonymous composers;

- Compositions, created at different times. Dyletsky’s concerts were written in 1670s-1680s, while the 12-voice pieces from the Kyiv collection were recorded in manuscripts dated 1730s-1740s and 1760s. Hence, they encompass the time span of 50 years and even more, which can be clearly felt in their sound.

- Compositions are different by the performers’ set – chamber 4-voice, traditional 8-voice and grand-scale 12-voice. It is interesting to retrace the specific features in the style of partes pieces conditioned by the differences in their sets, since in 4-, 8- and 12-voice singing, the singers have different tasks, which gives a possibility of experimentalising with different numbers of performers.

Dyletsky’s "Musical Grammar" of 1679. Russian State Library. Fund 173.I, № 107.

The 17^th century was the age of birth and development of the Ukrainian professional chorus culture. Composer, singer, conductor and music theorist Mykola Pavlovych Dyletsky (?1630–1690) was its key figure.

Information about his life and work is very scanty, it is found in the versions and copies of his treatise «Musical Grammar». Dyletsky studied at the Wilno Jesuit Academy, as he himself stated in the edition of his «Grammar» created in Moscow in 1679 to an order of the Russian manufacturer Dmitri Stroganov. It is known that in 1675 Dyletsky presented the Wilno (present-day Vilnius) City Hall with a piece of poetry titled «Toga Złota» («Golden Toga»), which, unfortunately, has not survived. For some time, Dyletsky worked in Smolensk (in 1677, a new version of his treatise was written in that city), following which, he moved to Moscow. Dyletsky’s contemporary deacon Ioanikiy Korenev, the author of the polemic work «Musikia» released in one manuscript with Dyletsky’s treatise «Musical Grammar», referred to him as a «Kyiv Citizen».

The process of rediscovery of Dyletsky’s heritage began as far back as in the 19^th century, with the emergence of music studies as a branch of science, and continues even now. Initially, Dyletsky was discovered as a scholar, for his treatise «Musical Grammar». In the second half of the 20^th century, Ukrainian musicologist Nina Herasymova-Persydska discovered the works by Dyletsky as a composer: three cycles of the Divine Service, the Resurrection Canon and a number of concerts. Her publication «Mykola Dyletskyi. Choral Pieces» – the first collection of the composer’s works – was released in Kyiv in 1981. Another piece by Dyletsky – the concert «Glory / Come here, people», attributed by Nina Herasymova-Persydska – was also published in Kyiv in 2006 (collection of scores «Partesny Concertos of the 17^th  – 18^th centuries from the Kyiv Collection», prepared for publication by Yevgeniya Ignatenko). Finally, over the past 10 years Russian musicologists Natalia Plotnikova and Irina Gerasimova discovered and made public two more liturgical cycles – an evening service and a «requiem» (funeral liturgy), and at least 16 concerts by that composer. All in all, more than 100 pieces are currently attributed to Dyletsky. Exactly the concerts recently found in the archives and bearing the name of Mykola Dyletsky represent the composer’s heritage in the programme. They have never been performed in Ukraine, and the very fact of attribution of their authorship remains not known to the wide circle of musicians and music lovers.

Dyletsky’s manuscripts are kept at the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg (collection of А. Titov, № 932–935). Their publication was prepared by Irina Gerasimova. Those pieces were included in the publication «Nicolaus Dylecki, ca. 1630-1690. Vesperae, Liturgia, Concerti quatuor vocum», issued in Warsaw in the fall of 2018.

Most newly-found concerts by Dyletsky use texts from liturgical publications of the Orthodox Kyiv Metropolitanate and the Uniate Greek Catholic Church (except «Thou Heavenly King» and «The Lord is my Enlightenment», based on Moscow editions). This prompts the assumption that Dyletsky wrote those compositions in Rzeczpospolita, before leaving for the Tsardom of Muscovy, that is, before 1677. They will sound with account of the specific pronunciation of Church Slavonic texts, widely spread on the Ukrainian and Belarusian soil in the 17 th century.

All concerts, except for «Glory / Come here, people», are 4-voice. By the voice set, they are rather varied, being a specific feature of the Baroque art. We used the set with the even filling of the choir range (descant–alto–tenor–bass) that later became classical, and also the one without the upper voices (alto–tenor–bass–bass) or with a «hollow» middle (descant–descant–bass–bass, descant–descant–descant–bass).

St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv

Dyletsky’s music passed an uneasy way to the listeners. In the Soviet times, it was neither performed nor recorded due to its religious content and church assignment. Changes began after the breakup of the Soviet Union and declaration of Ukraine’s independence. Audio recordings of pieces by Dyletsky appeared at the beginning of the 3 rd millennium, the best known of them were performed by the «Kyiv» chamber chorus under the baton of Mykola Hobdych, and by «A cappella Leopolis» ensemble (art director – Roman Stelmashchuk, conductor – Liudmyla Kapustina).

In his work, Mykola Dyletsky combined the achievements of his contemporary European music – Italian, German, Polish – with the Slavic melos. The same idea inspires the performers in our project, who set for themselves the task of synthesising the best achievements in the interpretation of the European Baroque music with the traditions of the Ukrainian choral school.

The anonymous 12-voice concerts «Come here, people» and «Sing a New Song to the Lord» were transcribed from the set of part books 41 П /XVIII–14, that belonged to the Kyiv-Pechersk Cave Monastery, dated 1760s. That set includes 11 part books out of 12. For some reason, the 12^th part book (the part of the 1 st bass) was marked with the code of St. Sophia’s collection (123/119 C). The concert «Tribulations of My Heart» is known in two sets: 121/117 С, dated 1730s-1740s on the basis of its paper, that was obtained by the Manuscript’s Institute of the Volodymyr Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine from Kyiv’s St. Sophia Cathedral, and in the above-mentioned more recent Kyiv-Pechersk Cave Monastery set 41 П /XVIII–14.

The page of the third alto’s book. Fund 41 П /XVIII–14. Institute of Manuscript of Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine

The fact that the same concert was recorded in the manuscripts of Kyiv’s St. Sophia Cathedral and of the Kyiv-Pechersk Cave Monastery proves that there were no separate traditions of the Kyiv-Pechersk Cave Monastery or St. Sophia Cathedral; there was a common singing community. Additionally, recording of the same concert in the sets of part books created at different times shows that the time of writing of a set of part books should not be taken as the date of writing of all the pieces recorded in it.

All the 12-voice concerts – «Tribulations of My Heart», «Sing a New Song to the Lord» and «Come here, people» – are three-choral (12-voice texture not always presumes a division into three choruses, but this is exactly the case here), with three-choral polyphony. All these pieces consist of one part and are based on the principle of continuous renovation of the musical material and a contrast: tonal, meter-and-rhythm (alteration of the metric signature – 4\4, 3\4, 3\1, 3\2, 3\8, etc.), texture (chord, ensemble, imitational presentation), chorus line-up (chorus tutti – ensembles different by their line-up), etc. The concerts reveal a developed polyphonic technique, in particular, such sophisticated compositional tools as three-voice canonical imitations and endless canons.

The Ukrainian partes singing naturally blends into the European context. Comparison of partes concerts with the Italian (Venetian multichoral compositions), German (Heinrich Schütz), Polish (Marcin Mielczewski) music has been in the focus of musical studies and discussions. Meanwhile, partes music bears national peculiarities, making it possible to speak about the Ukrainian version of the Baroque music, noted by the known scholar Nina Herasymova- Persydska. The genre of a partes concert is typologically kindred with the European church concert (concerto ecclesiastico). The main difference is that the Ukrainian church music is performed solely a capella, no instruments are used. Its intonational originality is no less important: you immediately hear that this music is Ukrainian. National peculiarities of the stylistic concept of a partes concert are also manifested in the choice of the verbal text.