CHORAL FUGUE FROM THE CONCERT “NE OTVERZHY” BY MAKSYM BEREZOVSKY: THE QUESTION OF TEMPO

Attention is focused on the work of Maksym Berezovsky, namely on his well-known spiritual concert “Do not leave me in the age of old age”, written to the text of selected lines of the 70th Psalm. Despite the awareness, it revealed aspects that require additional study and may be of interest to both scientists and practitioners. These aspects are related to the interpretation of the tempo in the final fuze “Da postidyatsya i ischeznut”. The purpose of the article is to determine the performance tempo of the final fugue of the concert “Ne otverzhy mene vo vremya starosty” by Maksym Berezovsky based on manuscript and printed sources. The issue of the tempo of the final fugue from M. Berezovsky's “Ne otverzhy” concert was investigated using handwritten and printed sheet music sources, which were analyzed. It has been established that the original author's Allegro tempo, available in one of the manuscript sources of the last third of the 18th century, was changed to Moderato for the first edition of 1817–1818. The indication of the moderate tempo of the final fugue continued in subsequent editions, until the publication of the collection of choral works by M. Berezovsky in 1989. Until the end of the 1980s, the fugue was performed at a moderate pace, which fundamentally changed the image-emotional concept of the entire cycle, smoothed out the protest mood of the final part. The expediency of the Allegro tempo in the final fugue of M. Berezovsky’s concert “Ne otverzhy” is proven by comparing this fugue with other dramatic fugues of the classicism era, present in the vocal and choral works of our outstanding composer’s contemporaries – V. A. Mozart, B. Galuppi, D. Bortnyansky. Cases of editing a fast tempo to a more moderate tempo in the concerts of B. Galuppi and D. Bortnyanskyi were found. In all the corrections made for the first edition of 1817–1818, one can see the hand of one editor – the then director of the Court Singing Chapel, a former student of B. Galuppi, D. Bortnyanskyi, who was involved in the preparation of this edition.