Music of Bortniansky is celebrated at the Shevchenko Society (06/30/02)

Music of Bortniansky is celebrated at the Shevchenko Society

by Dr. Orest Popovych

NEW YORK - The 250th anniversary of the composer and conductor Dmytro Bortniansky (1751-1825), generally recognized as a giant in Ukrainian religious music, was observed by the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) at its building in New York on May 18 with a musicological conference and a concert in his honor. The conference offered lectures richly illustrated with recordings of Bortniansky's choral and orchestral music, and was crowned with a live solo performance of a selection of his songs.

In her opening remarks, Dr. Larissa Zaleska Onyshkevych, the president of NTSh, drew a thought-provoking connection between the career of Bortniansky and the Pereiaslav Agreement of 1654, which had imposed on Ukraine the overlordship of the Muscovite tsar. Bortniansky was born in Hlukhiv, in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine, but spent most of his career as musician at the tsar's court in St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia. He had joined the countless other members of the Ukrainian cultural-intellectual elite of his day who were transplanted to Russia, where they helped develop Russian culture, while losing much of their Ukrainian identity in the process.

For the year 2004, the government of Ukraine is planning an elaborate program to mark the 350th anniversary of the Pereiaslav Agreement. In response, NTSh has announced "The Mykhailo Hrushevskyi Competition - 2002" for original scholarly monographs to be written on any aspect of the consequences of the Pereiaslav Agreement for Ukraine. Authors of the five best monographs will receive grants of $5,000 each. What happened to Bortniansky is one example of the consequences of the Pereiaslav Agreement, concluded Dr. Onyshkevych.

The program was then taken over by Dr. Andrij Szul, chairman of the Law and Advisory Committee of NTSh, who was the prime mover behind this event. Dr. Szul, formerly a faculty member at the Pennsylvania State University, was uniquely qualified for this task, not as a practicing attorney, but as a Ph. D. in musicology with Bortniansky as his specialty.

After presenting an overview of the program, Dr. Szul gave his own talk on "Bortniansky: An Enigma as an Artist," in which he traced the life of the composer, so typical of talented Ukrainians at a time when subjugated Ukraine was unable to provide for them the right conditions for their professional growth.

Bortniansky attended the famous school of music in his native Hlukhiv when he was snatched from there at the age of 8 by a Russian scout for the St. Petersburg court choir, because of the boy's brilliant singing voice. Bortniansky spent the next 66 years abroad, having studied for 10 years in Italy, then returning to the Russian capital as court composer, teacher and conductor, eventually becoming director of the court choir in 1795.

Dr. Szul posed the provocative question as to whether Bortniansky was Ukrainian only by birth or in his heart as well? Is there anything distinctly Ukrainian among the more than 400 of his compositions, written mostly in Russia by employing French and Italian styles? Dr. Szul answered that at some level Bortniansky's Ukrainian consciousness continued to be nurtured in St. Petersburg, because the composition of the tsarist court choir was up to 70 percent Ukrainian, as was its director at the time, Marko Poltoratsky. Bortniansky himself reportedly sang Ukrainian songs and occasionally spoke Ukrainian.

When he became the highest musical authority in Russia, Bortniansky carried out reforms in Russian church music which have been described as revolutionary. Musicologist Pavlo Matsenko wrote that the changes introduced by Bortniansky have imbued Russian church music with "a purely Ukrainian mood, melodic phrasing and an inner piety typical of Ukrainians." Illustrative of Bortniansky's influence was a Russian law passed in 1816 according to which only music composed or approved by Bortniansky could be sung in churches. However, according to Dr. Szul, Bortniansky never managed to parlay his enormous professional stature into personal wealth, so that upon his death his family found itself in a catastrophic financial condition.

Roman Sawycky Jr., a member of NTSh and lately a faculty member of the Mykola Lysenko Academy of Music in Lviv, contributed a lecture titled "Bortniansky in Western Publications from the 19th Century to the Present," which in his absence was read by Dr. Andriy Danylenko of NTSh. According to Prof. Sawycky, the works of Bortniansky have been widely disseminated in the Western world, making him the best known Ukrainian composer in musicological literature. Although there used to be some confusion in older literature as to the composer's nationality, most of the recent reference books, including the "New Encyclopedia Britannica," clearly identify Bortniansky as a Ukrainian composer. The newest and most comprehensive encyclopedia of music, The New Grove Dictionary of Music, a 29-volume opus published in 2000, has a most authoritative article on Dmytro Bortniansky written by Dr. Marika Kuzma.

Stepan Maksymiuk of the Washington branch of NTSh, who was introduced by Dr. Szul as "the biggest collector of Ukrainian music recordings", spoke on "Bortniansky's Discography Since 1902," illustrating his talk by playing some of the recordings. The standing-room-only audience was privileged to hear the first ever recording of Bortniansky's music - a 100-year-old rendition of "Otche Nash" sung by a choir in St. Petersburg.

Mr. Maksymiuk presented a progression of Bortniansky recordings, extending into the 1930s. According to him, there are now 344 recordings of Bortniansky's music, of which 164 are on LP records and 39 are on CDs. Altogether Bortniansky's heritage comprises over 400 works of which 118 are religious. Samples of the recordings were displayed in the conference room in an exhibition titled "Bortniansky in Iconography, Discography and Print," which was prepared by Messrs. Sawycky and Maksymiuk.

The last two speakers analyzed the structure of Bortniansky's choral and orchestral music, respectively, with the aid of recorded excerpts. Vasyl Hrechynsky, the artistic director of the Dumka Chorus in New York, chose for deconstruction the Sacral Concerto No. 3, with which he demonstrated what he called the "ensemble contrasting" in choral music. Regardless of how much of the musicology the audience was able to absorb, it certainly appreciated the gorgeous sounds of some of the sacral music.

Dr. Jaropolk Lassowsky, professor of music at Clarion State University, spoke on "The Elements of Form in the Instrumental Works of Bortniansky against the Background of His Contemporaries." Dr. Lassowky chose to contrast Bortniansky's "Symphonia Concertante" with Mozart's 40th Symphony. While the Mozart symphony has three movements, Bortniansky's work has only two, lacking the middle one called "development." However, Bortniansky managed to accomplish the development by unconventional means, such as incorporating it in the first and third movements, said Dr. Lassowsky, which represented a progressive approach that placed Bortniansky ahead of his contemporaries.

The live concert featured a selection of five of Bortniansky's songs performed by Soprano Natalya Honcharenko, accompanied by pianist Christine Karpevych. Significantly, three of the songs, "A Hymn to the Moon," "Bohorodytse Divo" and "The Aria of Sanchetti" appeared to be New York premieres.

Dr. Anna Procyk, a vice-president of NTSh, closed the program, thanking all who contributed to its success, and expressed her hope that we won't have to wait too long for a repeat performance of such quality.

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