NEW YORK – The first days of March annually focus on contemporary art, as dozens of art fairs and art aficionados from all corners of the world descend on New York. After an exhausting run through piers and galleries to stay current with the trends and ever-evolving culture, it was a welcome treat to find myself immersed in a totally different era and to step back in time.
“Musical Grammar in 17th Century Cracow and Kyiv,” performed by the ensemble Origo (from the Latin word meaning “lineage” or “origin”), directed by the musicologist and conductor Eric Rice, offered the audience at the Ukrainian Institute of America a mesmerizing journey through the early music of Eastern Europe.
The concert, part of the acclaimed Music at the Institute (MATI) series, took place at the majestic Fletcher-Sinclair mansion and drew a full house of music lovers on March 5 to hear a group praised by The New York Times as “a fine, flexible ensemble.”
The aim of the program was to showcase the pollination of new musical styles originating in Western Europe, mainly in Italy and Germany, in the lands to the east – Poland and Ukraine. The historical context and background of the emergence of this beautiful music was explained in the pre-concert lecture by Mr. Rice. The richly illustrated talk demonstrated how the music crossed the borders and found roots in the new soil.
The concert was divided into five parts: music of German transplants in Poland, Polish sacred music, the madrigal in Poland, Italianate and German sacred music, all of which led up to the grand finale, taking up about half of the program – Ukrainian sacred music exemplified by, Mykola Dyletsky’s Divine Liturgy.
Dyletsky (ca.1650-1690) is considered one of the most important figures in early Ukrainian music, as a composer, music theorist and author of the first book on musical theory in Eastern Europe, “Musical Grammar.” He is known for having introduced into Eastern musical tradition the practice of polyphony, which was already well established in the West. That style was picked up and developed further in their concerti by the great trio of 18th century Ukrainian composers Maksym Berezovsky, Dmytro Bortniansky and Artem Vedel.
The public was enthralled by the mastery of the flawless performance – the clarity of the voices, the perfectly executed harmony and exceptional diction by all singers of the difficult phonetics of Polish and Ukrainian.
Concerts such as this always leave one with a desire to hear more. Fortunately, the next MATI concert, “Preludes, Serenades and More,” on April 2 will feature a combination of works by Ukrainian and international composers: Mykola Suk, Johann Stamitz, Antonio Vivaldi, Felix Mendelssohn and Ivan Karabits. The concert will be performed by the University of Connecticut Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Harvey Felder with Rebecca Patterson, cello, Solomiya Ivakhiv, violin and Melvin Chen, piano.
For more information about the forthcoming concert and other programs, readers may visit www.ukrainianinstitute.org and join the conversation with the institute on social media platforms.