Features of Sacred Music in the Context of the Ukrainian Baroque

Abstract

The main goal of this article is the research of different genres of spiritual music in the Ukrainian baroque era. This music is decisive for an understanding of Ukrainian culture. In order to achieve this, research following methods was used: comparative-historical, sociocultural, structural, genre-stylistic. Baroque appears as an intermediate between the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment. Features of the broader character of the Ukrainian civilization explain its cruising between different cultures, correlating between Western culture and Eastern Orthodox culture. The cultural dimension of Ukraine was crossed by different religions: Orthodox, Catholic, Greek-Catholic, and different paths of Protestantism. This fact specified a music of this age. Two basic directions feature specific of spiritual singing of the Ukrainian baroque: partsong (“High baroque”) and spiritual song (“Middle baroque”). Partsong is represented by liturgical and paraliturgical (concerts) genres. This direction was unique because it was a synthesis of Eastern-Christian and Western-Christian tradition (mostly by Catholic musical tradition as multi-chorus composition, musical rhetoric). At the same time, partsong of the orthodox tradition was formed by liturgical tradition. A large influence on the Greek-Catholic church was a catholic music tradition, in which polyphony is not performed “acapella”, but with instrumental accompaniment. Spiritual song was more linked with the catholic tradition and less with the protestant one. It did not have any canonical orthodox genres, but was borrowed by text–music forms formed in Europe in the Age of late Renaissance and early Baroque period. Greek-Catholic tradition was more linked with catholic one. Therefore, this music had a sacred character, becoming a genre of liturgical music. Palimpsest in its confessional dimension became a distinctive feature of the Ukrainian Baroque and created a unique face of the Ukrainian liturgical music.

1. Introduction

Baroque emerged in Europe as an intermediate culture between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. It was the first universal synthetic direction, which manifested itself in all its forms and regions. As L. Ushkalov (2017) notes: «Rome is considered as the homeland of the Baroque (sometimes Spain claims to be such), as well as other cities in Italy, especially Naples. Baroque covered the whole territory of Europe: from Portugal to Russia, from England to the Balkans. The reflection of European Baroque is also the Baroque of Latin America». (https://kharkiv-nspu.org.ua/archives/5635, accessed on 24 June 2021).

The well-known Ukrainian researcher S. Krymsky gives the description of these main features of the Baroque as a certain art style: “As a synthetic trend, the Baroque reconsiders certain spiritual achievements of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, from the point of view of the cataclysms in modern Europe. At the same time, the spirituality of the symbolic vision of the world is taken from the Middle Ages, humanism (sometimes in a tragic interpretation) and the restoration of antiquity from the Renaissance while pathetic authenticity and dynamics from the Reformation” (Krymsky 1997, pp. 48–53).

In the Ukrainian tradition, the word “baroque” is considered to be borrowed from Italian, less often from Portuguese, even fewer from French languages (Ushakov ibidem).

The term “baroque” was introduced to the Ukrainian academic setting by Hryhoriy Pavlutsky, a professor at Kyiv University. He used this term during content generation for the second volume of “History of Russian Art” by Igor Grabar (section “Baroque of Ukraine” and others—Pavlutsky 1910) in 1908–1910.

“The Ukrainian nation has two epochs of particular historical prosperity such as the era of the great princes of Kyiv and the era of XVII-XVIII centuries. It has reached the high level of nation’s development during the first period, but with the influences of Byzantium, Rus of those days was not able to show its national identity especially vividly. This is not what we see in the XVII-XVIII centuries. Here the people embark on the fierce struggle for their national existence and this moment is connected with the greatest rise of their culture and art”.

(Ernst 1919, p. 5)

“Baroque and Romanticism” are precisely those periods of spiritual history that have left the strongest imprint on the Ukrainian spirit. And then comes futurology: “Whatever paths the spiritual development of Ukraine goes, it should refer to those very central epochs in the spiritual history of Ukraine which are Baroque and Romanticism” (Chyzhevsky 2004, p. 208). To some extent, this can be proved by the multifaceted image of the phenomenon of Ukrainian Baroque (history, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, church life, philosophy, theology, liturgical sewing, poetics and rhetoric, lexicography, drama and theater, prose, poetry, neo-baroque, the influence of the Ukrainian baroque on folklore, Russian and Serbian culture, etc.), which was created in the final edition of 2004 “Ukrainian Baroque” (Sobol 2015).

In this research, the following methods are used in order to characterize a border character of the Ukrainian culture: comparative-historical, sociocultural, and structural methods; in order to analyze spiritual music of the Ukrainian baroque: comparative-historical and genre-stylistic.

2. Border Character of the Ukrainian Civilization and Its Influence on the Formation of the Baroque Culture

Ukraine belongs to the so-called “border” type of civilizations, and this is only due to the fact that, from the very beginning of its existence, it borders with the wild field, which is a symbol of the Mongol–Tatar invasion.

The boundedness of Ukrainian culture acts as its ability to exist on the borders of different cultures. Each nation develops at the crossroads of different regional cultures. However, in Ukraine, the phenomenon of borders has a huge historical significance associated with the rare situation of different civilizations’ imposition: ancient and Byzantine, East-Turkic and Middle-Eastern (in their Muslim and Khazar-Jewish versions), West Slavic and East Slavic (Krymsky 1997, p. 48). This movement of Ukrainian culture, among other cultures, has always taken place at its own route.

At each stage of its development, the borderline type of Ukrainian civilization had its own characteristics and features. The era of Ukrainian Baroque, which chronologically covers the 17th and first half of the 18th century, was included into all spheres of European development and had strengthened society’s interest in the universal foundations of European civilization—Christianity and the Enlightenment. During the growing confrontation between Catholicism and Protestantism, when a wave of counter-reformation was rising in Western Europe, the prominent Ukrainian figure P. Mohyla proclaimed the ideas of ecumenism, the Christian unity of the entire cultural world (Krymsky 2003, pp. 6–7). He also identifies the concept of the synthesis of Western and Eastern European culture as a unity of Latin wisdom and the archetype of the heart.

One should bear in mind that the Baroque era, on the one hand, is the era of Christianization, and, on the other, is a special attempt to give this era more secularity. Baroque is an open type of culture that has a diversity in its form and content. At the same time, Baroque culture was not one-dimensional; there were some distinctions within it. In the Catholic countries of Western Europe (Spain, Italy, France, Portugal), this culture is in a role of elitist culture, associated primarily with aristocratic art, which is prone to mannerism.

In Ukraine, along with the so-called “high style” there is a “ground” or folk baroque, associated with folk culture. Here, in the Baroque culture, along with the so-called “high style”, certain democratic tendencies are manifested. They are based on the Protestant community or Orthodox fraternities and are fed on the spirit of patriotic national movements, of which we can speak of two baroque tendencies—aristocratic and folk. These two directions did not exist on their own or in isolation, but developed in interrelation while penetrating each other.

The characteristic features of the Ukrainian Baroque were decorative effects, antithetically as a manifestation of the reality’s dynamization with its conflict and fluidity, and find their presentation in such arts as architecture, weaving, poetry, and others.

3. Transformational Processes of the Ukrainian Spiritual Music in the Baroque Time

Characteristic features of Ukrainian Baroque were its ornamentality, antitheticality as a manifestation of the acceleration of reality, and its strife and fluidity, which find their presentation in such forms of art as architecture, poetry, and others. These features are also embodied in the music of the Ukrainian Baroque era. Musical and rhetorical figures as a manifestation of ornamentation are widely used in the new church style of Ukrainian sacred music—the partsong style, which got its name because of the way the works are recorded—not in the form of a score, but by parts. The partsong style was the Ukrainian equivalent of European fractal or figurative singing (cantus fractus, cantus figuralis), that is, music of the metrical type (Kuzminskyi and Kapral 2018, pp. 102–3), which became the leading type of Catholic (and partly Protestant) church singing in the Baroque period. The adaptation of the new European musical style in church genres led to an increase in the importance of musical rhetoric with special attention to the oratorical-pathetic gesture. “Thus, for example, in the concerto I Weep and Wail (from the funeral rite of the eighth mode) the lyrics determined the tense and dramatic character of the music, the varied use of minor. In addition, the rendering of the words “I weep” conveys a sob, and the pauses between repetitions should reproduce a sigh. The word “death” as a “keyword”, is emphasized by the cries of the entire 12-voice chorus. The words “river,” “ascend” are illustrated by long chants, while “descend”—by the descending movement of the melody, “trumpet”—by fanfare turns, “jumping, playing”—by dance rhythms” (Herasymova-Persydska 1987, p. 278). The ornamentality also finds its expression in the contrasting musical fabric of Baroque partsong compositions: this includes light and shade (loud—soft), the play of volumes (chorus—ensemble), timbres (for example, replacing three basses with two treble and a tenor), etc.

This transformation also happened to the basic type of sacred music—church monody, which was created on the basis of hymnographic texts. I. Iasynovskyi, answering the question of why confessionally oriented Orthodox church art bears the musical and stylistic influences of the Latin West, notes that “hymnography as an art form in the Baroque period becomes a nationwide phenomenon, which satisfied the musical and aesthetic needs of all social strata”. The monodic chants based on hymnographic texts undergo a stylistic renewal: their melodic line becomes flexible, the musical form acquires clarity and precision, the musical development occurs thanks to the elasticity of the metre-rhythmic constructions. The melody of hymnographic chants determined “the appearance of repetitions, reductions or prolongations of the lyric line, adapting it to the musical form. The musical thinking proper became an important factor in providing hymnographic compositions with cohesion” (Iasynovskyi 1991, p. 220). The stylistic transformation of church hymnography and the departure from logocentrism in the musical interpretation of sacred texts, clearly indicate a new approach to liturgical music which has long been established in the Christian West.

Let us consider in more detail the transformation processes that took place in Ukrainian sacred music in the Baroque era. To date, no one has questioned the thesis that the sacred music of the Ukrainian Baroque is closely related to the European tradition, but, at the same time, has its own specific features, which are explained by cultural and religious factors. Let us try to systematize the peculiarities of Ukrainian Baroque sacred music in its differences from Western European music. Firstly, in contrast to Western Europe, where musical innovations (dynamics, contrast, antithetic) were formed in secular genres (opera, cantata, suite, instrumental concerto), and the Church only updated in accordance with the aesthetic demands of the era, the transformation processes in the music of the Ukrainian Baroque began and continued in spiritual genres. The new musical style in Orthodox church music was formed on the basis of Catholic church genres, not secular ones, as the most powerful musical centres of opera and instrumental music were located in the European centres, far from Ukrainian lands. The renewal of musical style within the church music sphere, when secular genres were given priority in Europe, is a specific feature of Ukrainian musical baroque.

Secondly, the musical and stylistic renewal was based on the Orthodox Church tradition, and therefore the genre system of Ukrainian sacred music differed significantly from European music. That is why only the new musical style and expressive means were borrowed, but not the whole system of liturgical genres. In the partsong style, compositions were created on liturgical texts, not of Western, but of Eastern Christian hymnography; not Latin, but Church Slavonic language was used. By preserving the genre system of Orthodox music, the new “Latin” style did not clash with established church traditions, but became an organic development of them, as had happened a hundred years before in the Christian West. Thus, a specific feature of Ukrainian musical baroque was the adaptation of the genre system of Orthodox music to the new style that came from the West.

Third, Ukrainian sacred music, unlike secular music, did not have a Renaissance stage in its Western European understanding: the Church medieval monody was replaced by baroque polyphony, bypassing the two-century Renaissance stage of development of church music art. Therefore, the appearance in the 17th century of linear notation and polyphonic partsong, at first glance, looked rather radical. However, the transformation of Ukrainian sacred music in the Baroque era was quite natural and logical, given the general development of musical culture in the Ukrainian lands, that, although they were distant from the European musical centres, the area of secular music in the Renaissance and early Baroque era were not far behind the general trends of the European musical tradition.

4. Partsong and Spiritual Song as Main Spiritual Genres in the Ukrainian Baroque Era

Considering the above features of the development of Ukrainian spiritual music in the Baroque era, let us characterize its two basic directions—partsong (“High Baroque”) and spiritual song (“Middle Baroque”). Partsong in the Ukrainian church tradition is represented by liturgical (liturgy, vespers, etc.) and paraliturgical (concert) genres. The uniqueness of Ukrainian partsong lies in the fact that it synthesized the achievements of Eastern Christian (genre system, liturgical texts) and Western Christian, primarily Catholic, musical traditions (multi-chorus composition, musical rhetoric, and emblematics). The markers of Eastern Christian, first of all Orthodox tradition in Ukrainian partsong, were liturgical texts, which were performed in Church Slavonic, and were the genre system of the Eastern Christian church tradition. The third marker for the Orthodox tradition was the type of performance of the sacred works a cappella, the only one permitted by the Orthodox Church. If the musical style of Ukrainian sacred music did not fall out of the context of European baroque, with its focus on the listener and the desire to impress him with grandeur and beauty, the three named markers clearly emphasized its confessional affiliation. As for the national component, the question is more complicated, as liturgical works in the Church Slavonic language were performed also in the Belarusian lands, and later came to Muscovy. Moreover, the Ukrainian partsong compositions were found in the storages of Serbia, which also indicates a greater weight of confessional markers in the Orthodox liturgical music of the Baroque era than national ones.

Until recently, partsong has been identified only with the Orthodox musical tradition, which was due to the general style of Russian musicological thought, where the Ukrainian–Belarusian liturgical tradition that developed in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was interpreted as strictly Orthodox, similar to Russian, without regard for the borderline nature of Ukrainian culture. That is why only now, first of all owing to the work of Belarusian–Russian researcher I. Gerasimova, we already have information about the Uniate partsong and its creators. Among Uniate composers, I. Gerasimova singles out Foma Sheverovskyi, whose vespers and litany were found and reconstructed by the researcher (Gerasimova 2010, pp. 56–66). These works were performed in the Vilna church branch, located in the historical Belarusian lands, and, according to the Uniate church singing, were not performed a cappella, but accompanied by the organ and a cappella of instrumentalists.

The Uniate partsong is a clear indication of the frontier nature of Ukrainian culture, while, at the same time, it has a specificity that distinguishes it from an Orthodox chant. Among the specific features of Uniate partsong is the use of musical instruments in church services, similar to Catholic church practice. Moreover, an important distinction is the writing of compositions on texts not only of traditional Eastern Christian, but also of Latin hymnography, such as litanies. We have already mentioned the work of Foma Sheverovsky, which belongs to the genre of litany, where the Latin text of one of the most famous Catholic prayers, the Loreto litany, has been translated into Church Slavonic. Such examples were made possible by ritual changes in Uniate churches. In Uniate church practice, the liturgy may have skipped the great and small entrances, the Proskomedia, the ektenias, added processions with the Holy Gifts and the singing of “I believe”, mentioned the Pope and read the Creed with filioque (Nowakowski 2005, pp. 171–72). In churches “organs began to appear, bells began to be introduced, altars were pushed to the wall, iconostases were not built or eliminated” (Soloviy 1999, p. 89).

The use of Latin hymnography in Church Slavonic translations is one of the distinctive features of the Uniate Church tradition. Translated hymnographic texts were also used in partsong compositions (Litany of Foma Sheverovsky) and in monodic chant. The Finnish researcher M. Takala-Roshchenko analyzes the church hymnography of the Corpus Christi, which, under the influence of Latin liturgical practices, was introduced into the Christian feasts of the Uniate Church after the Synod of Zamość in 1720. She notes the use of Church Slavonic translations of the works of Ambrose of Mediolano (quoted by Thomas Aquinas) and Thomas Aquinas in the Corpus Christi hymnography (particularly in the texts of the Canon of Matins) (Takala-Roszczenko 2013, pp. 169–74). That the use of Latin hymnography by Uniate authors was systematic, not sporadic, was confirmed by a detailed analysis of the texts of the canon of Matins, whose troparions used Church Slavonic translations of the lines of Thomas Aquinas’ eucharistic hymns “Verbum supernum prodiens”, “Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium”, “Sacris solemniis”. In the process of translation, the Latin originals were adapted to the style of Eastern Christian hymnographic texts (the metrics of medieval Latin verse were lost, and a final refrain was added to the translated Latin text). That is why the new hymnography fitted organically into the context of the Uniate worship tradition that existed in the eastern territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The Middle Baroque movement is represented by the spiritual song, which, in the Orthodox tradition, does not belong to the genres of liturgical music, but is an example of post-liturgical practices, that is, the prayerful singing of Christians outside the Christian liturgy. The formation of baroque spiritual songs in Ukrainian lands began in the Orthodox environment, but the genre of strophic spiritual songs in textual and musical forms was borrowed from the Catholic (to a lesser extent from Protestant) tradition, where songs of religious content in national languages since the Renaissance became part of liturgical practice, replacing the traditional Latin hymnographic texts from some types of liturgical services. The adaptation of European forms of spiritual songs in Ukrainian lands took place in the Orthodox environment, where its post-liturgical branch was created.

5. Main Features of Chants in the Ukrainian Baroque Culture

The genre of spiritual song was genetically connected not only with Catholic song patterns, but also with Ukrainian baroque poetry, the genesis of which reaches the Western European literary genre system. This connection was more evident at an early stage, when song works were designated according to the tradition of Ukrainian literary baroque, in particular the poetic school of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. As early as the first half of the 18th century, echoes of this tradition can be found in Western Ukrainian manuscript songbooks: songs in them are designated as “пѣнiє” (chant), “єпѣзoдioн” (epeisodion), “тpeн” (tren), “aплявз” (applause), “xвaлa” (glory), “гiмн” (hymn), “плaч” (lamentations), “lamentum”, “pean”, etc. However, the most common names for spiritual songs were the definitions “пѣcня” (song) and “пcaльмa” (psalm). As Yu. Medvedyk notes, an important element of Ukrainian baroque spiritual song was its emblematics, which manifested itself in the creation of the lyrics of songs for the incipit (Medvedyk 2006, p. 172).

In Ukrainian musicology, secular and spiritual songs of the Baroque period have been called cantos and psalms (spiritual cantos) for many decades, and among their distinctive genre and style features is noted a three-voice structure, where two voices move in parallel terces, and the lower voice acts as a harmonious foundation. An example of this type of polyphony is found in the Western Ukrainian manuscript of 1649, called Latopys Lwowski, at the end of which there is a notation of the song “Ave Maria” (Medvedyk 2006, p. 312). However, there is no genre definition of the work in this record. In general, contrary to popular belief, the definition of “кaнт” (canticle) in the Ukrainian tradition of the 17th century did not refer to the song genre, and therefore it is not worth using this term to refer to the baroque song. As L. Korniy notes, the definition “кaнт”, together with others (“пѣниe”, “xop”) in the 17th century, was used in manuscripts for school dramas (Korniy 1991, p. 225)—baroque performances of a religious or moral and educational nature. However, these designations by no means indicated the use of any particular musical and poetic genre in school dramas, and the word “кaнт” (the Latin word “cantus” means singing) denoted any musical fragments. The designation “cantus” in plays was not synonymous to the three-voice songs, which is shown in the manuscript of a school drama from the Chernihiv Collegium in 1706, where the word “cantus” denotes a wide textual–musical composition of a through form, recorded in unison (Kuzminskyi 2019, pp. 149–52). The manuscript does not specify exactly how this work should be performed, but the type of melody itself envisaged multivoiced structural solutions, typical of baroque music. Since the practice of playing on musical instruments was widespread in the Chernihiv Collegium, it is most likely that this work was performed as a vocal–instrumental piece (Kuzminskyi 2019, p. 144). The term “кaнт” for the three-voice song (mostly secular) began to be used outside the Ukrainian lands, namely in the Russian Empire, where the achievements of Ukrainian musical culture on foreign soil gave momentum to the renewal of the Russian musical tradition, including the song genre. It was in Russian manuscripts of the mid-18th century that two types of songs were already clearly distinguished—secular and spiritual, and the term “кaнт” was used to refer to the former and “пcaльмa” for the latter. In Ukrainian manuscript songbooks of the 18th century, the term “cantus” was not used, with rare exceptions related to the appeal of the Russian tradition. If we talk about the so-called polyphony of the cantus type, it is also considered to have been borrowed from Europe. However, a study of Polish manuscript sources showed that this form of song recording was not used in the 17th century, and therefore the Ukrainian three-voice (“cantus”) structure arose in the Ukrainian lands, even though it has quite a Western genesis.

Thus, the Ukrainian Baroque spiritual song, which developed in the Orthodox environment, is quite an original product of the Ukrainian Baroque, which combines the traditions of both Western para-liturgical singing and Ukrainian Baroque poetry. However, in the Orthodox environment, spiritual songs, despite their popularity among all segments of the population, did not become part of the liturgical tradition.

Ukrainian Uniate church practice was oriented to a greater extent towards the Roman Catholic Church, and therefore the spiritual song became one of the genres of liturgical music. Spiritual song, which in the Ukrainian lands in the 17th century developed predominantly in the Orthodox environment, also spread actively among the Uniates in the 18th century. Moreover, although most of the songs were marked by confessional tolerance (Medvedyk 2006, p. 104), the Uniate branch nevertheless had its own specifics. Under the influence of ceremonial changes, mainly in the Belarusian territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, from the second quarter of the 17th century the spiritual song, as with the Roman-Catholic tradition, it is included in worship (Stern 2000, p. 326). In Uniate practice, spiritual songs began to fulfil a paraliturgical function, as they were increasingly heard in churches during various church services—vespers, matins, prayer service, etc., as well as some parts of the liturgy. Accordingly, the method of structuring the song repertoire in the hymnal changes as well: it is organized according to the calendar-thematic principle (Medvedyk 2006, p. 104) used in Orthodox and Catholic liturgical books, as well as in Catholic canonicals and hymn books. Whereas translations of Latin church songs and hymnographic works in Ukrainian Orthodox hymn books were sporadic and their selection was dictated exclusively by the beauty of the text and melody, Uniate hymn books contained songs borrowed and translated from the Latin and Polish that occupied an important place; they numbered in dozens and remained popular for a long time.

The ambivalence of the Baroque spiritual songs of the Uniate tradition, which throughout the 18th century became part of worship in the Uniate churches, was that they combined two approaches in their understanding of the sacred—the medieval and the immediate. From the medieval, they retained a gravitation toward Church Slavonic, as the language of temple worship had a sacral status. This was especially evident in the Basilian edition of spiritual songs, published under the title “Bogoglasnik” (1790–1791), where many song texts underwent literary editing to bring them closer to the norms of Church Slavonic. However, most of the songs in this edition retained the features of the literary Ukrainian language, which was close to the spoken Ukrainian. Along with the practice of singing spiritual songs at various church services and in some parts of the service by all the congregation, rather than by the choir as a delegated part of the Christian community, the songs reflected a second, newer, approach to the sacred, where an anthropocentric understanding of it comes to the fore, and where the involvement of the individual in worship as an active member of the Christian community takes on an important meaning.

6. Cossack Duma as an Expression of Heroic Spirit of the Ukrainian Baroque

The genre of sacred song in the Baroque period was, therefore, part of religious musical culture, which gravitated both toward the sacred sphere and toward the everyday life of man. This ambivalence gave the song genre great possibilities, which consisted in the potential sacralization of a Christian’s everyday life and opened up the sphere of the “High Baroque” to certain genres of folk art, in particular the Cossack Duma, where the national heroics acquire a sacral dimension.

Moreover, this was no accident. In the 17th century, the “Liberated Jerusalem” and Torquato Tasso, which became a model for praising the feats of chivalry, are translated into Ukrainian. In the XVI century in Europe, except Poland and Spain, chivalry began dying because of the advent of gunpowder. At that time, in Ukraine, chivalry became popular and flourishes, and Ukrainian Cossacks were the bearers of this chivalry. Modern researcher A. Sokolova, in her monograph, devoted to the consideration of Ukrainian Cossacks in the context of European chivalry, notes that the latter has its roots in the spiritual and religious tradition of Byzantium. Cossack culture became a model of chivalry and religious service, which was necessary for the survival of the nation, and the image of the Cossack as a warrior and aristocratic knight has become emblematic as a representative of the Ukrainian nation (Sokolova 2020, p. 323).

Dumas about the Tatar–Turkish captivity affirm the idea of popular unity, the idea of resistance to invaders, and celebrate chivalry (Dumas “Cossack Golota”, “Ivas Konovchenko”, “Hvedir Bezrodny”, and “Otaman Matyash”). A great poetic talent developed the themes of Dumas about the death of a lone Cossack on the battlefield (“The Three Brothers of Samara”, “Death of a Cossack in the Kodin Valley”, “Cossack and Eagle”, etc.). Nothing evokes such sorrow and longing as a Cossack knight’s death in the field, “near the Samarka River”, in the Kodyma Valley, or on the Savur-Mohyla:

• “Oh, all the fields of Samara have been ploughed,
• Only they didn’t see,
• That in the Samarka river,
• And in the wells of Saltanka,
• Where three small thorns grow,
• And two green gullies,
• That’s where the three dear brothers rested.
• That’s where they rested,
• Dead from their hacked wounds and their shot wounds…”
(Nudha 1969, p. 139)

A special place among the Dumas about the struggle against the Turkish–Tatar expansion belongs to the Duma “Cossack Golota” or “Cossack Netyaga”, written down in the 17th century, one of the beloved and popular works. Here is an apotheosis of Cossack heroism, the glorification of chivalry and confidence in the power of the people and its warriors. The image of the Cossack Golota inspires confidence in the invincibility of the Cossacks and the belief in their own dignity. It is the power of Zaporizhzhya, the power of their arms, that fundamentally changed the position of Ukraine.

• “...Cossack Golota
• fears neither fire nor sword,
• nor the third swamp. []”.
(Nudha 1969, p. 45)

The second group of dumas of Ukrainian epic gravitates towards certain historical figures: Bohdan Khmelnitsky, Bohun, Barabash, Pototsky, and others. This is connected primarily with the War of Independence in 1648–1654, which gave an impetus to a new rise of epic art. In these Dumas, the national heroes, such as B. Khmelnitsky, are glorified:

• “Oh, Khmelya, Khmelnychenko!
• You have raised a row
• And a great turmoil among the lords []”.
(Nudha 1969, p. 229)

Or I. Bohun:

• “Bohun stood,
• With the Pasha Turks,
• The Krulewski Poles,
• The dukes of Kamlitz
• Bohun fought []”.
(Nudha 1969, p. 231)

7. Conclusions

Ukrainian baroque culture has a definitive meaning for the development of Ukraine in the context of the formation of the Ukrainian nation. It becomes a subject of world history and is closely linked with the development of European cultural processes. The border character of the Ukrainian civilization influenced some cultural processes in Ukraine; they are closely linked with all cultural spheres included musical culture of this era.

Spiritual music of the Ukrainian baroque was developing according to the European cultural processes. At the same time, it is specific, and was linked with the different confessional environment. When in the Western Europe baroque art was represented by laic genres (opera, chants, instrumental concert) and catholic music tradition, the Ukrainian baroque was almost only spiritual and was forming on the ground of Eastern European church tradition. More powerful was the orthodox branch of the spiritual music, represented by partsong and spiritual song, in which were combined a European type of thought and the genre system of the liturgical music formed in the Orthodox East.

Markers of the orthodox chants were Church Slavonic languages of the liturgical texts, Eastern Christian genre system of the church chants, and performance of sacred songs a cappella. Partsong of Uniate Church had different markers. The first of them was the same, the second was almost the same as the orthodox one (Catholic genres were sometimes added with translation into Church Slavonic to the traditional orthodox system) and the third one was different: in the Uniate Church liturgy was with instrumental accompaniment of the church chants. Despite some difference, both traditions represent features of the Ukrainian baroque church music, the border character of which enabled the establishing of different national models in different Christian confessions. Analogical differences occur in these two branches of the spiritual song, which are used for non-ecclesiastic (Orthodox tradition) and ecclesial (Uniate tradition) purposes. Both branches were represented by baroque genres in the poetic and music component. As in the music gernes, the difference of the Uniate confessional tradition was in the possibility of using spiritual songs during the liturgy. This fact forced Latin influences, which appeared using of hymnography and spiritual songs translated from Latin.

The heroic spirit of the Ukrainian baroque created new music genre—Duma—based on the Ukrainian folklore. Cossack dumas were dedicated to the special events in the Ukrainian history. A special feature of the Cossack duma is the spiritual unification of words and music that gives them a sacred character.

Further research should present a multi-directional focus of Ukrainian culture of the next centuries. Among the most interesting aspects can be emphasized a development of the Ukrainian protestant music tradition at the beginning of the 20th century. This music was influenced by American and European musical practice, and, at the same time, it brought a new type of national music language. It seems interesting to make an analysis of different Christian churches in the works of contemporary Ukrainian composers.