Dyletsky, Diletsky Mykola, Nikolai Pavlovych, *ca. 1630 Kyiv, †1690 Moscow, Ukrainian music theorist and composer. Dyletsky’s biography contains many gaps and ambiguities; existing studies provide various, often contradictory information, most of it unsubstantiated by source material. It is known that Dyletsky spent a considerable time in Vilnius, and before 1675 he studied liberal arts at the local Jesuit Academy. Before studying in Vilnius, he may have spent time in Warsaw, where he was a student of members of the royal chapel. After 1675, he left for Russia; initially, he was probably in Moscow, then in Smolensk (1677–78), and from 1678 or 1679, he lived permanently in Moscow in the house of A. Koreniev, where he likely acted as a teacher and maintained close contacts with the Moscow composers’ circle. Dyletsky was associated with the Stroganov family; it is possible that he led the Stroganov choir in Solikamsk. Dyletsky is the author of Musical Grammar, a treatise known in several textual versions and translations, and numerous copies, as well as a work known only by its title, Toga Złota w nowey świata metamorphosi… (Vilnius 1675, lost print). He composed a number of religious vocal works.
Dyletsky’s musical and theoretical work coincided with a period of fundamental transformation in Russian music. Following Nikon’s reform, new forms, technical means, and stylistic techniques, associated with new musical trends and the Baroque musical thinking of Western Europe, began to be transplanted into traditional Orthodox chants. Educated in Poland and familiar with the work of Polish composers (e.g. M. Mielczewski and J. Różycki), and likely also with Western European music, Dyletsky played a significant role in this process, both as the author of Grammar, a textbook based entirely on new compositional and technical principles, and as a teacher and promoter of new trends among Russian composers in the second half of the 17th century. Dyletsky’s Grammar is the first textbook on music theory and composition in Russian. It contains a comprehensive explanation of the principles of so-called partesnoye penie, polyphonic compositions, and 17th-century polychoralism, considered in the context of Russian music. In addition to practical tips illustrated with examples (including those from Polish music and his own work), the author includes a number of formulations relating to Baroque categories of musical aesthetics and introduces some new musical terms into Russian music theory. The immense popularity of the Grammar, copies of which were found in many places throughout former Russia, testifies to the interest of Russian musicians in the latest achievements in European music and underscores the significant importance of this treatise. Dyletsky’s compositions also enjoyed considerable popularity, copies of which can be found, for example, in the monastery collections in Kostroma and in the music lists of the monastic brotherhood in Lviv (1697).
Dyletsky’s compositional output, gradually rediscovered since the 1960s, is preserved primarily in libraries and archives in Moscow, St Petersburg, and Kyiv. It comprises over 100 works for three, four, and eight voices. Dyletsky’s creative interests seem to have focused on multi-choir, a cappella liturgical music employing the concertante technique, textural contrasts, and simple polyphonic devices. Among the surviving works are liturgical cycles, 25 three-voice concertos, 40 four-voice concertos, 10 eight-voice concertos set to liturgical and non-liturgical texts, as well as individual harmonisations of monodic Orthodox chants and sacred songs, which were notated in individual manuscripts and included in treatises.
Literature: W. Metallov, Starinnyj traktat po teorii muzyki 1679 goda, sostavlennyj kievlaninom N. Dyleckogo, “Russkaya muzykalnaya gazeta,” 1897, no. 12, S. Smolenskii, Musikiyskaya grammatika N. Dyleckogo (introduction), Petersburg, 1910, D. Lehmann, N. Dylecki und seine “Musikalische Grammatik” (1681) in ihrer Bedeutung für die Geschichte der russischen Musik, “Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft,” II, 1960, no. 1, D. Lehmann, M. Dylecki a muzyka polska, “Muzyka,” 1965, no. 3, J. Kieldysh, Russkaya muzyka XVIII veka, Moscow, 1965, A. Shreier-Tkachenko, Razvitie ukrainskoi muzyki v XVI–XVII vv., “Musica Antiqua Europae Orientalis,” Acta scientifica I, Warsaw, 1966, D. Lehmann, Dilezki und die grosse Wandlung der russischen Musik, “Studia Musicologica,” IX, 1967, no. 3–4, J. Kieldysh, K voprosu ob istokakh russkogo partessnogo peniya, in Studia Hieronymo Feicht septuagenario dedicata, ed. Z. Lissa, Krakow, 1967, A. S. Kalaj Jakymenko, Muzykalno-teoreticheskaya mysl’ na Ukraine v XVII stoletii i trudy N. Dyleckogo, “Musica Antiqua Europae Orientalis,” Acta scientifica II, Bydgoszcz, 1969, N. Gerasimova-Persidskaya, Khorovyi kontsert na Ukraini v XVII–XVIII stolitti, Kyiv, 1978, W. Protopopov, N. Dylecki i ego “Musikiyskaya grammatika”, in Pamyatniki russkogo muzykalnogo iskusstva, ed. J. Kieldysh, vol. 7, Moscow, 1979, C. Jensen, A Theoretical Work of Late Seventeenth-Century Muscovy. Nikolai Diletski’s “Grammatika” and the Earliest Circle of Fifths, “Journal of the American Musicological Society,” XLV, 1992, J. Kazem-Bek, Marcin Mielczewski w “Gramatyce muzycznej” Mikołaja Dyleckiego, in Marcin Mielczewski. Studia, ed. Z. M. Szweykowski, Krakow, 1999, C. R. Jensen, Musical Cultures in Seventeenth-Century Russia, Bloomington, 2009, I. Gerasimova, Kanty vremeni shvedskogo “potopa” (1655–1660 gg.) u rosiiskikh rukopisyakh poslednei chetverti XVII v. “Arche. Pochatok,” 2012, no. 6, I. Gerasimova, Transfer and adaptation of West European musical technologies and East European church singing traditions in Russia (last third of the 17th – first half of the 18th century), in Creating Liturgically: Hymnography and Music. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Orthodox Church Music. University of Eastern Finland, 8–14 June 2015, ed. I. Moody, M. Takała-Roszczenko, Joensuu, 2017, I. Gerasimova, Vplyv rannobarokovoho kontsertu khramovoho na muzychnyi styl Mykoly Dyletskoho, in Universalia et particularia. Ars et praxis Societatis Jesu in Polonia, ed. B. Bohdanowicz, T. Jeż, Warsaw, 2018.
Compositions
Service of Proportional Kant for 8 voices
Kyiv Service for 8 voices
Smolensk Service for 8 voices (surviving fragment of Part I: Only-Begotten Son)
Requiem Service for 8 voices (surviving first descant voice)
two untitled services: for 8 voices (7 voices preserved) and for 4 voices (3 voices preserved)
Moscow Service for 4 voices
fragment of the service Cherubim Hymn in Dyletsky’s kant for 4 voices (surviving kryuk notation)
Vespers for 8 voices
Paschal Canon for 8 voices
Christmas Canon for 8 voices (lost)
Concertos for 3, 4, and 8 voices
Several Easter stichera
humorous kant My name is the treble, for 4 voices (text probably by Dyletsky)
Manuscripts
Manuscripts of the listed works are held in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kyiv, and Lviv; because many sources are anonymous, Dyletsky’s authorship is doubtful in several cases. Dyletsky is also credited with the musical examples to his own treatise, and a late-17th-century manuscript collection of kants contains editorial notes in his hand.
Treatise
Musical Grammar, the treatise survives in three main redactions: the Vilnius redaction, the Smolensk redaction, and the Moscow redaction. The Vilnius version was made in Vilnius around 1675 in Polish and is lost; a later version translated into Old Church Slavonic as Idea grammatiki musikijskoj was prepared by W. Rezants in Moscow in 1679 and dedicated to G. Stroganov (Moscow, Russian State Library (formerly Lenin Library), coll. 173 no. 107); moreover there are 9 various versions of this variant: Saint Petersburg, National Library of Russia, Q XII, no. 4, and Moscow, Russian State Library (formerly Lenin Library) – coll. 35 no. 5.41 from the turn of the 17th and 18th c., coll. 310, no. 177 from the beginning of the 18th c. (fragment), coll. 7, no. 57 from the second quarter of the 18th c., coll. 218, no. 14 from the mid-18th c.; Moscow, State Historical Museum – coll. I. Zabelin, no. 168 from 1730–40 (fragments of two copies), Synodal collection, no. 777 from 1705–11 (a fragment written down by M. Lodygin; missing parts in: Moscow, Russian State Library, coll. 218 no. 347/1); Kaliningrad Region State Archive – coll. 103, no. 65a from the beginning of the 18th c. (written down by M. Lodygin); Moscow, Glinka National Museum Consortium of Musical Culture – coll. 283, no. 8126 from the mid-18th c.
The second, Smolensk redaction, Grammatika musikijskogo peniya, was made in Russian probably by Dyletsky in Smolensk in 1677 and dedicated to T. Litvinov, now lost, it has two variants; the first from the turn of the 17th and 18th c., made by M. Arseniev (Moscow, Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, coll. 181, no. 541) has six various versions: St. Petersburg, Institute of Russian History – coll. 238, section 1, no. 256 (prepared by A. Zakharov as Grammatika ili izvestnaja pravila); Kostroma Regional State Archive, coll. 558, section 2, no. 583 from c. 1770 (fragments); Kaliningrad Region State Archive, coll. 103, no. 553 from the end of the 18th c. (fragments); Lviv, Andrei Sheptytsky National Museum, manuscript collection no. 87/510804 from 1723 (prepared in St Petersburg in Ukrainian translation), two variants now lost: Grammatika peniya…, formerly the library of I. Sakharov in Moscow, and Grammatika ili izvestnaya pravila…, late 18th century, formerly in the library of Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv; the second variant of the Smolensk redaction is lost, known only from fragments published by I. Sakharov.
The third redaction is called Moscow redaction, titled Grammatika peniya musikijskogo…, prepared by Dyletski and J. Korenev for Dmitrii Stroganov in Moscow in 1679 in Russian (Moscow, State Historical Museum, coll. J. Barsov, no. 1340), it has 5 different variants: Moscow, State Historical Museum, Synodal collection, no. 184 museum collection, no. 4072 from the beginning of the 18th c. (fragments); Moscow, Russian State Library, coll. 173, no. 116 from the turn of the 17th and 18th c.; St. Petersburg, Institute of Russian History, coll. F. Plyushkin, no. 263 from the 2nd half of the 18th c.; Saint Petersburg, National Library of Russia, coll. A. Titov, no. 3753 from the turn of the 17th and 18th c.; the second variant of this redaction by I. Korenev in Russian in Moscow in 1681 (Moscow, Russian State Library, coll. 205, no. 146) has one more variant: Moscow, Scientific Musical Library named after S. Taneyev, Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, shelf mark W 68 from 1743 (made by M. Kononov). In addition, there are also known accounts combining elements of different variants and editions: Moscow, Russian State Library, coll. 210, no. 5 and coll. 37, no. 101 form the end of the 18th c. (by V. Chistyakov). The presented ordering of the sources of Dyletsky’s Musical Grammar is not yet final and requires further archival research.
Editions
fragments of the Smolensk redaction of Musical Grammar, in I. P. Sakharov, Studies on Russian Church Kant, “Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniya,” 1849, no. 2, 3, 7, 8, and special issue
Musikijskaja grammatika N. Dyleckogo (the 1681 version, Lenin Library, coll. 205 no. 146), ed. S. V. Smolenskii, Saint Petersburg, 1910
Kant “Imia moje jest dyszkant”, in T. N. Livanova, Essays and Materials on the History of Russian Musical Culture, Moscow, 1938
Cherubim Hymn from the untitled 8-voice service, in Chrestomathy of Ukrainian Pre-Modern Music, ed. O. I. Shreier-Tkachenko and A. S. Tsalai-Yakymenko, Kyiv, 1970; 2nd ed. Chrestomathy, Kyiv, 1974
Paschal Canon and six other choral works, in N. Gerasimova-Persidskaya, Partesny Concert, Kyiv, 1976
fragment from “Service of Proportional Kant” and “Cherubim Hymn in Dyletsky’s kant”, in Monuments of Russian Musical Art, ed. J. Keldysh, vol. 7, ed. V. Protopopov, Moscow, 1979.
Choral Works of M. Dyletsky, ed. N. Gerasimova-Persidskaya, Kyiv, 1981
Sacred Works, ed. M. Hobdych, Kyiv, 2003
Vesperae, Liturgia, Concerti quatuor vocum, ed. I. Gerasimova, in Fontes Musicae in Polonia, ed. T. Jeż and M. Jochymczyk, vol. 9, Warsaw, 2018
