Ukrainian and Belarusian church music of the 17th century: meeting of the East with the West

The late 16th – the beginning of the 17th century became a turning point for the development of the Ukrainian-Belarusian church chant tradition. The most important sign of its renewal was a change of musical semeiography. The five-line square Kyiv notation gradually replaced the znamena one of neumatic type.The Ukrainian-Belarusian church repertoire was enriched by monodic Balkan chants (Bulgarian and Greek) and European-style polyphonic works. Such innovations were due to various factors which are discussed in this article. Borrowing Greek chants was a step towards the Greek East. Our attribution of kalophonic Greek chants, written in Ukrainian and Belarusian staff-notated manuscripts of the late 16th – 18th centuries, materializes this step with names and facts previously unknown to historians of Ukrainian, Belarusian and Byzantine music. The appearance of Ukrainian polyphonic music was a step towards the West, which testified to the mental openness of Ukrainians, since musical means (monophony or polyphony) for the most Orthodox residents of the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, did not become a marker of confessional affiliation, although the idea of associating polyphony with Catholics circled in those days.With the advent of polyphonic singing, the monophonic chant tradition has not disappeared. Often the Divine Liturgy itself was monophonic, and only the church concert was polyphonic. The Eastern tradition of church chant met with the Western one, they started coexisting, and this was the unique feature of the Ukrainian-Belarusian church music of the 17th century