Singer In the Russian Camp
Among those at the outset of the brain drain northward was Feofan Prokopovych, an outstanding statesman and theologian of Russia under Peter I. He was an ardent exponent of the idea of the Russian tsar being chosen by God and the theory of Moscow as the Third Rome. The brothers Oleksiy and Kyrylo Rozumovsky, the former a favorite of Elizabeth of Russia, the latter Ukraine’s last Cossack Hetman and President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Count Bezborodko, etc. But they were all in politics, and there were also painters, writers, sculptors, and musicians who managed to lend their works created in Russia an inimitable Ukrainian coloration. One cannot help but mention artists Leonty Borovykovsky and Dmytro Levytsky, composer Maksym Berezovsky, and of course the celebrated Russian author Nikolai Gogol (Mykola Hohol), descendant of Cossack Colonel Yevstafy Hohol. Be it as it may, their respective subjects were primarily and closely connected with Ukraine.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the musical culture in the Russian Empire could not be imagined without Ukrainian Dmytro Stepanovych Bortniansky. One of the most productive and popular composers, and author of Eastern Orthodox hymns, his creative legacy continues to captivate people’s hearts and minds and hearts, and not only among believers. Bortniansky’s titanic work in developing church vocal standards and composing spiritual choral pieces is stunning. Regrettably, people in Ukraine do not know much about this outstanding compatriot of theirs.
In early July 1751, the small Ukrainian provincial town of Hlukhiv played host to Count Kyrylo Rozumovsky, the last hetman “on both bides of the Dnipro and of the Zaporozhzhian Host,” attending a Grand Elders’ Council of Cossack colonels and “others of varying rank” to be presented with Empress Catherine’s patent, thus making Hlukhiv the capital of the Ukrainian Hetmanate. The event almost coincided in time with the birth of Dmytro, son of Stepan and Mariya Bortniansky.
The Bortniansky originated from the province of Bec in eastern Poland and eventually Dmytro’s father Stepan found himself in Slobozhanshchyna (Ukraine’s extreme east — Ed.) whence he settled in Hlukhiv and married a Cossack widow by the name of Maryna Tolstoi.
Count Kyrylo Rozumovsky, after becoming hetman, began to arrange things in Hlukhiv according to St. Petersburg standards, instituting court protocol, issuing edicts with formulas like “Our Highness hereby decrees...,” instituting official holidays, staging balls and other festivities, and giving the place a regal touch. He was given to an obsession dating from childhood when he and his brother Oleksiy (future paramour and secret husband of Russia’s Empress Elizabeth) sang in a church choir. Ukraine (then officially known as Little Russia) was famous for its vocal talent, and people from Left Bank Ukraine, particularly from Hlukhiv, Baturyn, and Chernihiv, were believed the best countertenors and descants of the empire. From the late seventeenth century talented boys were brought to St. Petersburg. In 1738, Empress Anna had decreed the foundation of Russia’s first music and choir school in Hlukhiv.
Dmytro was six when his parents noticed that he had musical talent; he could hear a but tune once and repeat it verbatim. In 1755, the hetman established a choir in Hlukhiv with an accompanying orchestra. Among recent graduates of the school was Hryhory Skovoroda, future brilliant philosopher who had on-the-job training in St. Petersburg’s Court Choir in 1742- 44. In 1758, Dmytro, then 7, was sent to the Russian capital where he met another Ukrainian Wunderkind, Maksym Berezovsky, then 13, who would during his short life create a treasure of church choral music. In addition, the court choir was conducted by Marko Poltoratsky from Chernihiv province.
At the age of 12, Dmytro, already a recognized soloist with the choir, was assigned leading parts. He made his name as King Admetus in Raunach’s opera, Alceste. In 1766-68, Dmytro worked under the guidance of Baldassare Galuppi, Italian kapellmeister, harpsichordist, and composer. The author of brilliant comic operas was fascinated by the court choir: “I have never heard such excellent renditions in Italy,” he said. He selected students for operas that proved a great success with St. Petersburg public.
In 1768, Galuppi, whose contract was nearing completion, returned to Venice, taking with him Dmytro Bortniansky as a protОgО. The young man spent eleven years studying and working in Italy, the center of world music, and this period made a tremendous impact on the young singer, already established as a composer.
In 1777, Bortniansky’s opera Creon [in Greek mythology, brother of Jocasta, queen of Thebes] was staged in Venice’s San Benedetto theater. The Venetian public, spoiled as it was by brilliant renditions, received it with enthusiasm. And his operas Alcidas and Quintus Fabius proved even greater successes. In fact, the latter was the greatest sensation of the 1778 ducal carnival in Modena. The Alcidas libretto was written by the great Pietro Metastasio. One Modena journal thus described Quintus Fabius: “In the evening of the 26th day of this month the local ducal drama theater opened... with a play staged anew to the music of Maestro Signor Dmitri Bortnianski from Moscow who is in Her Majesty Empress of Russia’s service. The versatility, finesse, and brilliant professionalism of the vocal performance, the inventive and enjoyable choreography, along with a masterfully constructed plot combined in a rendition that was enjoyed and highly praised by the Court of His Highness and was at the same time applauded by the audience...”
Dmytro Bortniansky returned to Russia by the end of 1779 and was appointed kapellmeister in Catherine I’s court. He also conducted choirs at the Knightly Infantry Corps and Smolny Institute. Already a noted young composer, he set about preparing a cycle of religious choir concertos.
In 1785, he was appointed kapellmeister at the small court of Pavel Petrovich, son of Catherine II and heir to the Russian throne. Dmytro Bortniansky taught music to future Emperor Paul I’s children for ten years, wrote a series of harpsichord sonatas and Russia’s first symphony. He also wrote operas and his Signor’s Holiday, The Falcon, and The Rival Son premiered with spectacular success.
Until his death on September 27, 1825, Dmytro Bortniansky occupied a very special and leading place in the Russian world of music. In 1796, he was appointed director of the court choir. He wrote cantatas and oratorios to Gavrila Derzhavin’s lyrics and the monumental hymn “We Praise Our Lord” (lyrics by Mikhail Kheraskov). Before 1814 he completed the religious choir concertos and translated canticles into contemporary music without interrupting his teaching. In 1812, when the Napoleonic forces invaded Russia, Bortniansky wrote “A Singer in the Russian Camp,” a song well-known in solo, choir and orchestra renditions to Vasily Zhukovsky’s lyrics. He did not interrupt his concerts and composing until his death.
Many Russian composers and music critics (Mikhail Glinka and Vladimir Stasov in particular) accused Dmytro Bortniansky of “Italianism.” Glinka, who would never win laurels in religious music, called the father of Russia’s composition and spiritual music Sugar Honeyovich Saccharine. But we also have another quotation. The great Hector Berlioz wrote of his works, “These compositions are marked by rare mastery in dealing with the choir, an excellent combination of overtones, sonorous harmony, and most remarkably, by a very free placement of voices, a wonderful scorn for all the rules worshipped... by Bortniansky’s contemporaries and especially Italians, whose pupil he was thought to be.”
Dmytro Bortniansky was buried at the Smolensk Cemetery in St. Petersburg and in 1953 his remains were transferred to the Pantheon of Russian Cultural Figures at the Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral. A monument to the great composer was never erected in St. Petersburg or even in Hlukhiv, his “little fatherland.”
There is a strong trend in Russia to consider “Russian” all cultural figures of Ukrainian and other parentage marked by special talent as artists, composers, writers in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other Russian cities. Yet this will not change history and people like Dmytro Bortniansky, Artemy Vedel, Maksym Berezovsky, Feofan Prokopovych, Nikolai Gogol, Maksymilian Voloshyn, Volodymyr Korolenko, et al., were always firmly linked to Ukraine by both blood and spiritual ties.
