Bortnyansky, Dmitry (born in 1751 in Glukhov, Chernigov province, - died Sept. 28, 1825 in St. Petersburg), Russian composer.

On the day of his death, he invited the chapel choir and asked to peform one of his spiritual concerts, and then quietly died. When Dmitry Bortnyansky was 7 years old, he was enrolled in the Court in St. Petersburg and due to his beautiful voice and outstanding musical abilities Bortnyansky soon began to perform publicly at the court scene. He became a favorite of Empress Elisabeth.  Together with other choristers Bortnyansky participated in entertainment concerts, court performances, church services; he studied foreign languages and acting. The court Italian composer B. Galuppi gave him lessons in theory and composition. In 1769, Empress Catherine II, yielding to the request of Galuppi, sent Dmitry to Venice for the improvement of musical knowledge. Being a gifted musician Bortyansky was granted a scholarship for study in Italy. Bortnyansky stayed in Italy until 1779, gained fame as a composer of operas and cantatas.  

    Bortnyansky returned to St. Petersburg. Emperor Paul I was impressed by his works and immediately Bortnyansky was appointed “the Composer of the Court Chorus”. In 1796 he became the first manager of the Court Choir and retained the post until his death; he was named “the Director of vocal music”. He was responsible for choir conducting, composing of church hymns and management of the Court Chorus. Bortyansky increased the number of members from 24 to 60 people and achieved that the Chorus performed only as a church choir (for theatrical performances a special chorus was established in 1800). The very rendering of the choir became more strictly ecclesiastical. At the urgent request of Bortnyansky a series of Imperial decrees protecting the purity of the church style, was issued. The old Russian church singing was simple and restrained, and most important – there was a strict correspondence between text and music. At that time the Italians (Galuppi, Sarti, Sapienza and others) dominated as composers of sacred music in Russia and their works were far from the spirit of Russian church music seeking mainly for effects with different kinds of grace, passages, trills, grace notes, sharp transitions, and fermata. Directed against the domination of the Italian concerto style, Bortnyansky’s influence on Orthodox worship singing was unconditional. He was commissions to teach junior deacons of parish churches of St. Petersburg “simple and unified musical singing”, for this purpose under his editorship a court tune liturgy in two voices was printed and distributed to churches. From 1816 to 1820 Bortyansky had the right of censorship on the spirituals.

    Bortyansky himself continued to compose taking western melodies, harmonies and counterpoint, widely using imitations, canons and fugato, avoiding the use of ancient church modes. But he drew attention to the line of words and music, banished from his works all kinds of theatrical effects, and gave them the character of the majestic simplicity. The style of Bortyansky’s ecclesiastical works is more harmonic than counterpointing. The main melody is almost always in the highest voice, and the other voices rarely have importance. His songs are always easy to perform. Due to deep feeling and accordance of music and words the composer’s works gained the sympathy of society and were widespread in all parts of Russia.

    Hector Berlioz wrote: „ All the works of Bortnyansky are imbued with true religious feeling, sometimes even a certain mysticism which forces the listener to fall into deep state of rapture; in addition Bortnyansky has rare experience in grouping of vocal masses, a tremendous understanding of nuances, sonorous harmony, and, surprisingly, an incredible freedom of location of parties, contempt for the rules established by his predecessors and contemporaries, especially the Italians, who he is considered to be a disciple.”

    Bornyansky works: 2 operas - “Falcon”(1786), “The Rival Son”(1787); Concert Symphony (1790), 6 Sonatas for a clavier, more than 100 choral works including 35 religious choral concerts and 10 for 2 choirs; patriotic songs from the Patriotic War of the year1812. The most famous are his concerts “By My Voice”, “Tell Me, O Lord, My Death”.