1751–1825 · Russia · Romantic
Dmitry Bortniansky (1751–1825) was a composer, conductor and singer who grew up in the Court Chapel Choir in Saint Petersburg and later directed it. Together with Berezovsky he is regarded as the creator of the classical Russian choral concerto. For students and amateurs he is above all a composer of choral and sacred music, and of the hymn 'Kol slaven'.
Dmitry Bortniansky was born on 28 October 1751 in Hlukhiv. According to the Polish parish priest Myroslav Tsydyvo, his father Stefan Skurat came from the village of Bortne, and the surname Bortniansky was formed from the name of that village.
As a small child the boy studied at the singing school in Hlukhiv, and at the age of seven he was admitted to the Court Chapel Choir in Saint Petersburg. There he sang church music and also appeared as a soloist in the 'hermitages', Italian concert performances. At eleven or twelve he sang female parts, as the custom of the day required, and later male ones.
In the chapel Bortniansky studied music and composition with Baldassare Galuppi, who directed the choir. His half-brother Ivan Tolstoy also sang in the choir.
When Bortniansky was seventeen, Galuppi recommended him as an especially gifted musician, and he was granted a stipend to study in Italy. He chose Venice as his permanent home. Since the seventeenth century the city had been famous for its opera: the world's first public opera house, open to anyone and not only to the nobility, was founded there.
Galuppi also lived in Venice, and Bortniansky had revered him since his Petersburg days. Galuppi helped the young musician become a professional. To deepen his knowledge, Bortniansky travelled to study in other cultural centres: to Bologna, to Padre Martini, and to Rome and Naples.
His Italian years produced three operas drawn from mythology: 'Creonte' (1776), 'Alcide' (1778) and 'Quinto Fabio' (1779). He also wrote sonatas, cantatas and church music. His sacred pieces set Latin and German texts, some without accompaniment and some with orchestra; one example is an 'Ave Maria' for two voices with orchestra.
In 1779 Bortniansky returned to the Court Chapel Choir in Saint Petersburg. He served at the court of Catherine II. In 1786 and 1787 he produced at least four French-language operas to texts by Franz-Hermann Lafermière. 'Le Faucon' and 'La fête du seigneur' date from 1786, as does 'Don Carlos'; 'Le fils-rival ou La moderne Stratonice' followed in 1787.
Around this time he also composed for instruments: sonatas for piano, a quintet with piano and harp, and French songs gathered into a cycle. His church music fused Eastern and Western European approaches to sacred singing and drew on the polyphony he had absorbed in Italy. Some works call for several choirs, a technique that goes back to the Venetian multi-choir writing of Gabrieli.
In 1796 Bortniansky was appointed director of the Court Chapel Choir. During his years there he wrote a great deal: more than a hundred sacred works, 35 concertos for four-part mixed choir and 10 for double choir, as well as cantatas and hymns.
In the chapel he built a choir with flawless technical and tonal qualities and a high vocal culture. The choir consisted mostly of singers who had received Ukrainian musical traditions at the school in Hlukhiv, and Bortniansky established those traditions in its repertoire. He also laid the foundation of the tradition of the multi-voice choir in Russia.
In 1816 Bortniansky obtained an imperial privilege giving him the right of censorship over the publication and performance of Russian sacred music. After that he took up the editing of the best examples of Russian church polyphony.
In the second half of the 1810s he published, in his own editions, works by Galuppi, Sarti and Berezovsky, as well as his own choral concertos.
Towards the end of his life Bortniansky went on writing romances, songs and cantatas. Among his late works is the hymn 'Pevets vo stane russkikh voinov' to verses by Zhukovsky about the events of the war of 1812. He was working on a complete edition of his works and spent almost all his money on it, but did not live to see it appear.
Bortniansky died in Saint Petersburg in 1825. At his wish the chapel performed his concerto 'Vskuyu priskorbna esi dushe moya' in his apartment, and he died to the sound of that music. He was buried at the Smolensky Orthodox Cemetery, and in 1939 his remains were moved to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, to the Tikhvin Cemetery, the Necropolis of Masters of Arts.
After the composer's death his widow Anna Ivanovna handed over the remaining legacy to the chapel: the engraved plates of the sacred concertos and the manuscripts of the secular works. Bortniansky's choral works were performed and reprinted many times, while his secular music, the operas and instrumental pieces, was soon forgotten.
The secular music was remembered in 1901, during the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of his birth: manuscripts of early works were found in the chapel and put on show. Among them were the operas 'Alcide' and 'Quinto Fabio', 'Le Faucon' and 'Le fils-rival', and a collection of keyboard works dedicated to Maria Feodorovna.
People began to speak of Bortniansky's secular works again only another half a century after that. By then much had been lost: after 1917 the chapel's archive was broken up and its materials were passed in parts to different repositories. Some pieces were found, but most vanished without trace, including the collection dedicated to the grand duchess.
Bortniansky's sacred works influenced Russian and Ukrainian composers of the nineteenth century. The influence of his music is also noted in the works of the Ukrainian composers Mykola Lysenko, Kyrylo Stetsenko, Mykola Leontovych, Borys Lyatoshynsky and others.
Bortniansky's sacred choral music is what is performed most today. Together with Berezovsky he is regarded as the creator of the classical type of the Russian choral concerto. He wrote 35 such concertos for four-part mixed choir and 10 for double choir. One of them, 'Vskuyu priskorbna esi dushe moya', was performed in his apartment as he was dying. Besides concertos he wrote Cherubic hymns, cantatas and hymns.
Among his works is the sacred hymn 'Kol slaven nash Gospod v Sione', written in the late eighteenth century to words by Kheraskov. The melody is also known in Germany, where it is sung to verses by Gerhard Tersteegen ('Ich bete an die Macht der Liebe'). He also composed the music for the hymn 'Te Deum', which Russian Orthodox churches sing at the close of thanksgiving services.
He also wrote secular music: operas, keyboard sonatas and chamber ensembles. The instrumental works include a quintet of 1787 scored for cello, viola da gamba, violin, harp and piano, and a concerto-symphony of 1790 where the piano is joined by two violins, harp, bassoon, cello and viola da gamba. In Italy his operas and instrumental music were very successful, while at the Saint Petersburg court his instrumental works were played only in a narrow circle of amateurs.
Bortniansky wrote choral music in Church Slavonic, and also in French, Italian, Latin and German. It is his sacred choral works that are performed most today. They remain important for understanding eighteenth-century Orthodox sacred music and affected Russian and Ukrainian composers of the following century.
After Bortniansky's death the inventory of his legacy listed five Italian operas, 30 arias and duets in Russian, French and Italian, 16 choruses in Russian and Italian, and 61 further pieces of other kinds: overtures, concertos, sonatas, marches and pieces for wind music, piano, harp and other instruments. No exact titles were given.
Our site has one edition of his music: 'Kontakion of Christmas' for four-part mixed choir, at the 'Intermediate' level. It is a choral work rather than a piano piece.