About the choral concert «Ne otverzhi mene vo vremia starosti» by Andriy Rachinsky

In the article the concert «Ne otverzhi mene vo vremia starosti» is studiedby A. Rachinsky, whose choral score has just been reconstructed from thevocal parties of the manuscript collection of party works. The purpose of thearticle is to keep track the influence based on the material of the concert «Neotverzhi» of A. Rachinsky's spiritual works written in a new style on the firstcomposer's experiences by M. Berezovsky, created during the early period ofcreativity, before departure to study in Bologna. The methodology of theresearch is based on the principles of comparative analysis, which providesthe basis for identifying common and distinctive features and identifying thehereditary connections between the work of A. Rachinsky and M. Berezovsky.Analysis of the concert «Ne otverzhi» by A. Rachinsky with full choral scorerevealed in this work the signs of a new style (individualization of the themes,increasing the role of solo constructions, relying on the functional harmonicframework basis, the use of cyclic composition with the final fugue, etc.) andconfirmed affiliation with the era of early classicism. Comparing this workwith the concerts of the early period of M. Berezovsky’s work, especially withthe concert «Ne otverzhi», written on the same text, showed many inheritedfeatures (from the interpretation of the cyclic form, the similarity of thefigurative and emotional decision of some musical themes and thecompositional structure of the sections to the «germination» of certainrhythm formulas), and also revealed distinctive features, first of all, in thegeneral meaningful concept of concert cycles, which is connected with thecharacter of the final fugue, which in the concert of A. Rachinsky is apersonification of life-affairs reminiscent of the beginning, a symbol ofvictory of man over enemies, while in M. Berezovsky suffering and protestingpeople still become a victim of life circumstances. The revealing of thehandwritten source with the full musical text of the concert «Ne otverzhi» byA. Rachinsky completed a long stage of search for choral parties and opened the way for public performance of this work worthy of being sung in Ukraineand abroad.