RSVP

The Byzantinoslavica project (author and leader Yevgenia Ignatenko, producer Ruslan Kirsh) bridges two majestic Christian music worlds – Byzantine and Slavic, interwoven in early Ukrainian church music. The project explores and presents the church’s monophonic chant that has sounded across Ukrainian lands for over a thousand years, dating back to the Baptism of Kyivan Rus’ in 988. The core of the project is the study of musical manuscripts, led by musicologist Yevgeniya Ignatenko. A significant focus of her research is the comparison of medieval Ukrainian, Greek-Byzantine and Balkan chants.

During 2024–2025, The Byzantinoslavica project became a winner of the “Per Forma” (implemented by the “Kyiv Contemporary Music Days” with the support of the Performing Arts Fund NL and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands and “House of Europe” (implemented by Goethe-Institut Ukraine) grant programs.

During the master class, there will be a presentation of The Byzantinoslavica project and the opportunity to experience Ukrainian sacred music of the Middle Ages and explore how it was documented in manuscripts. Together, we will learn to read Byzantine and Kyiv square notations, as well as sing in different medieval modes – both diatonic and chromatic.

Bio:

Yevgeniya Ignatenko studied Music Art and Musicology in Ukraine (National Music Academy of Ukraine, Nina Herasymova-Persydska) and Byzantine Chant and Palaeography in Greece (Lykourgos Angelopoulos, Maria Alexandru). She received her PhD in Musical Art in 2006. Since 2002, she has taught in the NMAU, where she serves as Associate Professor. She was awarded a scholarship of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (Greece, 2007-2008, 2014-2015) and Juliusz Mieroszewski Centre for Dialogue (Poland, 2024).

Yevgeniya Ignatenko is a member of the International Musicological Society Study Group “Music of the Christian East and Orient” and of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Study Group for Palaeography of Byzantine Music “Chrysorrhemon”. She was a scientific advisor and lecturer of the projects “Musica sacra Ukraina” (2020, http://lab.openopera.com.ua), “Open Partes – communication without borders” (2021) and “Vertep. Neo-Baroque mystery” (2021), implemented with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. She is a leader of the Byzantinoslavica Study Group, founded in 2023 in Kyiv.

Yevgeniya Ignatenko’s scholarly interests lie in early music, early Ukrainian music, Byzantine music. A significant part of her work involves the study of manuscripts. She is a co-editor of “Partesny Concertos of the 17th-18th centuries from the Kyiv Collection” (Kyiv, 2006) and has authored over 60 scientific articles. She lectured at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2021, 2024) under the Erasmus+ international mobility program, at the F. Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz (2022), and conducted master classes on the Slavic musical paleography at the National University of Music in Bucharest (2024). She appeared at numerous congresses and festivals in Ukraine, Greece, Poland, Romania, Austria, France, Lithuania, Italy and Germany.