Partes concerts by Mykola Dyletsky

The musical written history of Ukraine is not obvious, as it is a history, which is in the process of analysis today, here and now. The clear thing is the lack of a holistic understanding of the different processes, necessary for the formation of an in-depth picture of what our music was like in different historical periods. 

The project Musica sacra Ukraina: partes dimension aims to conduct a comprehensive study of one of the most substantial, distinctive, important, and little-known elements of Ukrainian musical history – polyphonic (partes) Ukrainian singing of the XVII century. This era marked radical changes in the domain of music: the monophonic singing traditional for church practice was replaced by polyphony. This allowed the emergence of the distinctive Ukrainian partes, which consists of thousands of pieces by predominantly unknown authors. The fusion of Western tendencies and local tradition created a wonderful synthesis, which allows us to speak of the phenomenon of Ukrainian baroque. 

Despite this, though partes was already being discovered in the ХІХ century, it remains known only within the professional music sphere. It still hasn't received such recognition as the Ukrainian baroque heritage in painting, architecture, literature, and philosophy. Reflecting on the reasons for this, discovering existing research groups and inspiring new ones, performing the repertoire on a modern level of understanding of this musical tradition, and finally introducing the wide public to this part of history – these are the long-term goals of the project, launched by Open Opera Ukraine. 

The project involves scientists (both Ukrainian and foreign), performing musicians, cultural trendsetters, musical journalists, and other members of the humanitarian sphere cooperating for several years with the long-term goal of presenting this aspect of musical history in a broad sociopolitical and cultural context.