CONCERTS OF THE SACRED MUSIC IN KYIV AND THEIR ARTISTIC DIMENSION: BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF THE NEWSPAPER KYIVLYANYN (1900-1917)

Abstract

The article analyses the spiritual dimension of the concert as a phenomenon, containing the main paradox of the event. On the one hand, we are dealing with the phenomenon of secular culture – a public concert with all its subsequent laws; on the other hand – the liturgical repertoire of sacred concerts maintained Christian traditions throughout its existence. This inherent contradiction between liturgical and concert purposes becomes a starting point for the study of the spiritual dimension of the concert and its main task, which will be investigated in this article.

Concert of the Sacred Music is the phenomenon of musical life, which had its own artistic dimension in Ukraine. A deep and sincere love for the spiritual and cultural native Ukrainian traditions, as well as sensitive and singing intellectual soul of Kyiv community brought together activists with uncontrollable desire to promote, update and enrich the spiritual culture of the Ukrainian people. Concert of the Sacred Music in Ukraine was a challenge, a breath of fresh air for people with hunger for deep spirituality.

It was specifically the spiritual concert that gave the beginning for the public concerts in their early history. In particular, in France, the place where the spiritual concerts originated from, such events were the first public concerts in the history of French musical culture. The idea of a spiritual concert was to allow anyone to attend the musical performance and appreciate its merits. Paradoxically, the rules of "spiritual concerts" were not too severe. As witnesses point out, the performers could walk around the hall during the concerts, public was allowed to talk, and notes of all kinds were circulated among the people. "Experts" set the tone for the event, shouting their own judgments to the hall, applauding or booing without waiting for the codes. However, this behaviour did not mean the contempt for the music and the musician; on the contrary, it was a sign of attention and sensitive response to the music event. The judgment of taste independent from the aesthetic preference of the king or prince emerges with the introduction of the spiritual concert at the beginning of the XVIII century, which in its turn caused the appearance of the modern figure "music lover".

On the other hand, the spiritual concert kept the memory of the aesthetics of Christian worship through its churchly repertoire from the beginning and throughout its existence. Revealingly, the Lent was the season of the spiritual concert season – a time when opera, drama and circus performances were banned, and only spiritual concerts could represent public artistic life. According to observations of cultural experts, spiritual concert was "a secular version of a church service", " a binding element between secular and sacred life" in these circumstances.

In this article the author primarily relies on the newspaper Kyyevlyanyn. Namely, the reviews of O. Kanyevtsova, a known Kyiv pianist, theorist and composer, permanent musical correspondent at the newspaper Kyivlyanyn. On the basis of such reviews the researcher concludes that the Kyiv critic was focused on the issues related to the quality of performance of the sacred music: vocal level of professionalism, depth of performance interpretations, development of new choral repertoire, and education issues, acquaintances of musicians and listeners with ancient and modern Russian and Western European music. All the data, which this article relies on, are to be introduced for the science for first time.