From Hlukhiv to Bologna: Three 18th-Century Ukrainian Composers

On May 15, 1771, in Bologna, Italy, a young musician passed the examination of the Accademia Filarmonica. According to Ukraine’s state electronic Велика українська енциклопедія (Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia, “VUE” below), that musician, Maksym Berezovsky (Максим Березовський), was born in Hlukhiv, the capital of the Hetman (the Cossack head of state), and had come to the imperial court in St. Petersburg as a singer at age 12.

In the 18th century, Dmytro Bortniansky (Дмитро Бортнянський), also born in Hlukhiv, likewise studied in Italy, and Artem Vedel (Артем Ведель), born in Kyiv, led choirs in Kyiv, Moscow, and Kharkiv. This article traces the three men’s paths through three Ukrainian encyclopedias — VUE; the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine’s Енциклопедія історії України (Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, “EIU” below); and the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (“IEU” below) — together with school records.

Hlukhiv’s Singing School and the Imperial Court Chapel in St. Petersburg

According to IEU, Hlukhiv was the capital of the Left-Bank Hetmanate in 1708-1722 and 1727-1764. EIU’s entry on the “Imperial Court Chapel” states that the choir formed at the imperial court in St. Petersburg in 1713 gathered the finest singers, especially boys with good voices, from across the empire, and above all from Ukraine. EIU’s explanation is that in the 18th century, many of the choir’s singers, and many of its directors, came from Ukraine.

The school set up to give boys a musical foundation before they were sent was the Hlukhiv school of singing and instrumental music. IEU writes that it usually had 20 students, who over two years studied musical notation, singing, violin, the hurdy-gurdy (гуслі), and the bandura, and that each year the top 10 were sent to the imperial court chapel.

When Was the Singing School Founded?

• IEU’s entry “Hlukhiv Singing School” states that it was founded in Hlukhiv in 1738 and continued for nearly 40 years.
• EIU’s entry (2004) gives two dates: on August 24, 1730, the empire’s foreign-affairs office instructed the Hetmanate’s General Military Chancellery to open the school, and on September 14, 1738, a decree of Empress Anna set its complement at 20 — 17 students, one choirmaster, and two instrumental-music teachers.

Depending on whether one counts from “the year the order to open it was issued” or “the year its complement was set,” the founding can be dated to either 1730 or 1738.

A Timeline of the Three Men

Year	Event	Source
1730	Order issued to open a school of singing and instrumental music in Hlukhiv (August 24)	EIU
1738	Decree of Empress Anna sets the school’s complement at 20 (September 14). IEU treats this as the founding year	EIU, IEU
1745	Berezovsky born in Hlukhiv	EIU, VUE, IEU
1751	Bortniansky born in Hlukhiv	VUE, IEU
1758	Bortniansky enters the imperial court chapel in St. Petersburg	VUE, IEU
1767	Vedel born in Kyiv (some sources give 1770 or 1772)	IEU, EIU, VUE
1768-1769	Bortniansky goes to Italy	VUE (1768), IEU (1769)
1771	Berezovsky passes the examination of Bologna’s Accademia Filarmonica (May 15)	VUE, IEU, EIU
1773	Berezovsky’s opera Demofonte staged in Livorno	IEU, EIU
1776	Bortniansky’s opera Creonte staged in Venice	IEU, VUE
1779	Bortniansky’s Quinto Fabio staged in Modena; he then returns to St. Petersburg	IEU, VUE
1787-1788	Vedel sent to Moscow to lead a choir	IEU (1787), EIU and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (1788)
1796	Bortniansky becomes director of the imperial court chapel. Vedel moves to Kharkiv	IEU, VUE, EIU
1797	Emperor Paul I bans the singing of choral concertos in church	IEU
1881-1882	Tchaikovsky’s ten-volume edition of Bortniansky’s sacred choral works published in Moscow	VUE (IEU gives 1882)
2024	Creonte performed in concert form in Ukraine for the first time (November 11)	VUE

Maksym Berezovsky

EIU and VUE give Berezovsky’s birth date as October 16, 1745, while IEU gives October 27. The difference is the 11 days between the Julian calendar then used in the Russian Empire and today’s calendar. All three encyclopedias agree that he was born in 1745.

According to EIU, he was born into a Cossack family in Hlukhiv and studied at Hlukhiv’s singing school and at the academy in Kyiv. VUE states that in December 1757 he came to St. Petersburg with the musicians of Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky’s ensemble, sang in the court’s Italian opera in 1758-1763, and served as a soloist of the imperial court chapel in 1762-1765.

The Bologna Examination, and the Years in Italy

VUE states that he stayed in Western Europe in 1769-1773, studied counterpoint under Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna in 1770-1771, and on May 15, 1771, passed the examination for membership in the Accademia Filarmonica, earning the rank of “maestro di cappella.” IEU gives 1765-1774 as the period he studied in Bologna and the rank he earned as “maestro di musica,” while EIU gives 1769-1771 for his studies and the rank of “composer academician.” The length of his stay in Italy differs from encyclopedia to encyclopedia.

In 1773, the opera Demofonte was staged in Livorno, Italy (IEU, EIU). EIU calls it “the first opera by a Ukrainian composer.” Among the sacred works the encyclopedias list is the choral concerto Do Not Cast Me Off in the Time of Old Age (Не отвержи мене во время старости; VUE dates it to before 1769). The lineup of 18th-century operas is also touched on in our article on the opera Zaporozhets za Dunaiem.

On the symphony, the encyclopedias diverge. IEU treats a recently discovered symphony as “the earliest known symphony by a composer of the Russian Empire,” while VUE states that the symphony is probably the overture to the opera Demofonte.

Dmytro Bortniansky

According to VUE, Bortniansky was born on October 28, 1751, to a father who had come from the Lemko region and a mother from Hlukhiv. VUE also states that his father came to Hlukhiv from the village of Bortne, now in Poland, and that the family’s surname had been Shukrat. In early 1758 he became a student of the imperial court chapel and studied composition under Baldassare Galuppi.

Did He Study at the Hlukhiv School?

Here the encyclopedias reverse positions. IEU states that Bortniansky studied at Hlukhiv’s singing school before entering the imperial court chapel. VUE (published 2025), citing researchers’ conjecture, notes the view that he studied at the Hlukhiv school before 1758, but calls this “unlikely.” In EIU, the entry on Bortniansky (2003) states that he studied at Hlukhiv’s singing school, while the entry on the school itself only names Bortniansky and Berezovsky as composers who carried the school’s tradition forward, without stating that they were students there.

In Italy, his Italian-libretto operas Creonte (1776, Venice), Alcide (1778, Venice), and Quinto Fabio (1779, Modena) were staged (IEU, VUE). According to VUE, Creonte, whose full score had been thought lost, received its Ukrainian premiere in concert form at the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine on November 11, 2024, and a staged performance at a theater in Chernivtsi on October 3, 2025.

Back in St. Petersburg, he became bandmaster of the imperial court chapel, and in 1783-1796 also served as bandmaster of the “small court” (Gatchina and Pavlovsk), where he also wrote French-language operas (VUE). From 1796 until his death in 1825 he headed the imperial court chapel, and according to VUE he moved the choir away from the operatic stage toward unaccompanied choral singing and promoted the recruitment of singers from Ukraine. From 1816, on the emperor’s order, he also took on the role of censor of church music (VUE).

How Many Choral Concertos?

• IEU: 35 concertos for four-part mixed choir and 10 concertos for double choir.
• VUE: roughly 65 concertos for mixed choir and 11 concertos for double choir.
• The biographical page of the Moscow Conservatory’s museum: 35 concertos for mixed choir.

VUE also notes that in 2021, the 270th anniversary of his birth, five previously unknown choral concertos were found and catalogued. None of the sources states the basis on which the works are counted.

Artem Vedel

From Vedelsky to Vedel

According to the biographical page of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Vedel’s family surname was Vedelsky (Ведельський); his father, a craftsman who carved icon screens, signed his letters as “Lukian Vedelsky, townsman of Kyiv.” The composer himself signed his own letters “Vedel,” and military records used the same name. Vedel is thought to be a shortened form of Vedelsky.

His birth year is disputed. IEU gives April 13, 1767; EIU gives April 1767 while noting that some sources give 1770 or 1772; and VUE’s headword lists all three years side by side as “1767/1770/1772.” The Kyiv-Mohyla Academy notes that the feast days of St. Artemon and St. Artemius fall on April 13 and 29 of the old calendar, raising the possibility that he was born in April.

Vedel studied at the Kyiv Academy, where he served as a soloist and later conductor of the student choir and first violinist of the student orchestra (EIU). After leading a governor-general’s choir in Moscow (IEU gives 1787; EIU and the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy give 1788), he returned to Kyiv to lead the choir of General Andrii Levanidov’s army, moving with the general to Kharkiv in 1796. IEU states that most of his choral concertos were written in 1792-1797, and that Emperor Paul I’s 1797 ban on singing choral concertos in church was a heavy blow to Vedel.

IEU states that all his surviving works are unaccompanied choral pieces for church use, with more than 80 known, of which 31 are sacred choral concertos. EIU puts the sacred concertos among the roughly 80 works at just over 20, and adds that he also arranged folk songs and wrote marches.

Ukrainian Composers, or Russian Composers?

All three lived under the Russian Empire, and Berezovsky and Bortniansky worked at the imperial court in St. Petersburg. For that reason, how sources refer to them varies.

• EIU opens its entries on Berezovsky and Vedel by calling each a “Ukrainian composer.” IEU states that Bortniansky’s sacred choral works joined the old Ukrainian tradition of choral music with the achievements of late-18th-century European music.
• The biographical page of the Moscow Conservatory’s museum calls Bortniansky “a Russian composer of Ukrainian origin” and counts his concertos among “the highest achievements of Russian sacred music.”
• The German National Library’s name authority file gives Bortniansky’s region as both Ukraine and Russia, and Berezovsky’s and Vedel’s as Ukraine.

As EIU’s entry on the imperial court chapel states, in the 18th-century imperial capital’s choir, many of the singers came from Ukraine, and a number of composers grew out of that choir. “Russian composer” can be read as pointing to the country and court where they worked, while “Ukrainian composer” points to where they were born and the choral tradition they inherited.

Berezovsky’s Death, and Vedel’s Later Years

Berezovsky died in St. Petersburg on March 22, 1777, at age 31 (EIU, VUE, IEU).

Vedel was said to have suffered a mental breakdown in 1799 and was placed in an institution in Kyiv; according to EIU, he was released nine years later still gravely ill, and died in 1808 at his father’s house in Kyiv.