КИЇВСЬКІ КОНЦЕРТИ ДУХОВНОЇ МУЗИКИ ОЧИМА МУЗИЧНОЇ КРИТИКИ (за матеріалами рецензій О. Канєвцова в газеті "Києвлянин": 1900-1917 рр.)
Kyiv sacred music concert in terms of music critics (based on reviews of O. Kanievtsova in the newspaper "Kyivlianin" 1900-1917)

Summary/Abstract: The article investigates the practice of sacred music concerts in Kiev during 1900-1917. Peculiarities of listen-ers’ attitude to sacred music concerts, their repertoire tastes, and issues on quality of sacred music performance in Kyiv in comparison with the similar Russian concerts at the turn of XXth century are presented in details in the newspaper "Kyivlianin" following the reviews of O.Kanievtsova, a musical critic.Ukrainian musical culture of the late XIX – early decades of the XXth century is extremely complex, multilateral and contradictory phenomenon which is still not fully studied and understood by researchers. Thorough investigation of musical-performing life in Ukraine, and, especially in Kyiv, which is known to be the main centre of choral performance culture of the period is impossible without sacred music concerts.The history of adoption and practice of spiritual concerts in Ukraine are still unexplored, which determines the relevance of this study. This article observes the process of describing and analyzing spiritual concerts by witnesses, i.e. by Kiev musical critics and admirers of sacred music.The newspaper "Kyivlianin" is an outstanding example of a large content of notes, announcements, reviews and articles that allow the author to plunge into the atmosphere of concert music of 1900-1917. Based hereon, there have been made conclusions about how the Kiev audience had treated these events, which repertoire tastes it had had and what had been the basis for evaluating a musical event.The article draws a distinct parallel between specifics and features of sacred music concert performances in Russia and Ukraine. Such aesthetic issues as the correlation of "church" and "music", the problems of development and tasks of church music and the principles of program preparation are the main issues that were primarily discussed in Moscow. Indeed, the scientific study of ancient church-singing culture in the second half of the 19th century put in the forefront an issue on ways of development of original orthodox church-singing culture and an issue on criteria of "eccle-siasticism" of spiritual musical works. The article shows the main issues that were unfolded in the pages of the Moscow press, i.e. in the newspaper "Moscowskie Vedomosti" in the years 1899-1903, and in the magazine "Horovoe regentskoe delo" in the years 1909-1910... A question of "ecclesiasticism" of spiritual music and the main approaches to what the church music should be were important issues in Moscow.Quite different situation was disclosed and showed in Kiev. There was no stage of prior scientific understanding of the ancient singing culture. A prerequisite for critical re-evaluation by Kyiv audience of such original, from aesthetic point of view, event as a sacred music concert was the appearance in Kiev of society of people capable of adequate per-ception of sacred music both as artistic-stylistic and content-semantic concepts. The development of choral culture of Ukraine, including Kyiv, in the 19th century has contributed to this.Liturgical and religious repertoire was performed by secular choirs on concert halls outside the liturgical context and beyond the requirements of the church calendar, i.e. exclusively for artistic purpose, which, in turn, instigated parish church choirs to a sort of "creative contest" with secular choirs and led them to move outside the choir place for concerts before a large audience.Interaction between church and professional secular choral performance brought a choral culture of Kyiv (and Ukraine) to a new level. Entering the repertory field of church and kliros works of Ukrainian, Russian and Western Euro-pean secular authors required a high level of professionalism. Absolutely secular choirs were set complex tasks to ade-quately convey the character and imaging of church music, which are fully achieved only in the context of worship.Thus, the main issues in Kiev turned out to be the issues related to the quality of sacred music performance, in-cluding vocal level of professionalism, depth of performing interpretations and learning of new choral repertoire, as well as issues of education, acquaintance of musicians and listeners with an unknown ancient and modern music, first of all, with Russian and Western European music.Following the above comparison, the article highlights the main difference between artistic tasks of Kyiv and Moscow spiritual concerts, which consisted in the fact that problems associated with the aesthetics of sacred music and aesthetics of church singing in Ukraine were not so keenly palpable. As mentioned above artistic-performing and educa-tional tasks were the focus of attention.Based on archival documents the author analyzes in this article spiritual concerts in Kiev and yet concludes that the concerts of sacred music have contributed to the development of both spiritual and aesthetic sense of the represen-tatives of Kyiv music society, the growth of the creative potential of Ukrainian composers, bandmasters and musicians, and became one of the factors of the rapid musical and cultural development of Kyiv at the turn of XXth century.All archive materials which has became the basis of the author’s study, have been introduced in the academic review for the first time.

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