Welcome on the web page of the project «Musica sacra Ukraina: Partes Dimension»!

Partes singing is a unique feature of the Ukrainian music history. Having entered the church service in the 17 th century, it introduced a radical novelty, since polyphony was added to monophony, traditional for the Eastern Rite church music. The confluence of the West European trends and the local tradition produced a striking synthesis in the partes music, making it possible to speak about the phenomenon of the Ukrainian musical baroque. The integral picture of the Ukrainian baroque culture is impossible without partes singing.

The purpose of the project launched by Open Opera Ukraine is to present the partes heritage in Ukraine and all over the world, as a substantial and strikingly representative element of the Ukrainian music history.

«Musica sacra Ukraina: Partes Dimension» is a platform for cooperation of scholars, musicians, Kulturträgers and managers, whose joint efforts intended to introduce partes singing will promote interest in and proper attention to such music. The project is organised in the format of a lab, consistently working with a musical piece – from decoding and editing of a manuscript to performance (live or recording).

Partner cooperation with art critics, historians, linguists, culturologists, source experts, theologians and various academic and cultural institutions (archives, museums) is of key importance for us. Establishment of communication among representatives of different sectors of humanitarian knowledge and performing musicians will contribute to comprehensive modern reconstruction of the partes heritage. The thing is that due to the polysemy embedded in partes (the verbal text and its meaning, specificity of notation and the method of its transcription, liturgical, historic, cultural, social and political context, etc.), their voicing requires a common search, to find the most effective techniques of performance.

More than half a century ago, the Ukrainian partes was studied in Kyiv by the known music expert Onysiya Shreyer-Tkachenko. With time, the interest in the Ukrainian Baroque raised into deep and extensive studies of the prominent scholar, Doctor in Arts History, Academician Nina Herasymova-Persydska. Her numerous research papers (monographs and articles), along with publication of notes of the partes heritage, demonstrated the importance of this segment of the Ukrainian music history, publicised information about it in the world context of the music studies.

Those studies were continued by the disciples of Nina Herasymova- Persydska, including the permanent academic adviser of the project, Ph.D. in Musical Art Yevgeniya Ignatenko, and other Ukrainian and international researchers. However, even now, thousands of anonymous and attributed pieces are waiting for professional researchers in the archives. In the Kyiv partes collection of manuscripts alone, not more than 10 percent of the materials has been processes.

The project «Musica sacra Ukraina» was inaugurated in June 2019 with a concert of Mykola Dyletsky’s compositions «Kyiv Citizen», held at St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv.

Our next step will be to record and to deliver presentation of a CD that, along with pieces by Mykola Dyletsky, includes concerts composed by unknown authors of the first half of the 18 th century from the archives of the Kyiv collection, kept at the Manuscript’s Institute of the Volodymyr Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine. On the web side you will find information about the project and its team, media reports about us, description of the CD and comments to each concert recorded on it, you may order the CD and leave your comments.

Partes singing deeply impresses with professionalism of the composer and the singers lets you feel the inimitable beauty of the Ukrainian musical tradition in its sounds, combined with the universal language of the European Baroque music. Finally, this is expressive and powerful Ukrainian music that deserves to be shared with the whole world!

Welcome to the partes dimension!