The article examines the manifestations of artistic dialogue, focusing on chamber and ensemble music by Ukrainian composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Artistic dialogue as a reflection of the main vectors of chamber music development in composers’ explorations influenced the processes of enrichment and transformation of its expressive field, and its specificity shaped the national character of this field. It has been shown that the interaction of the artist with cultural and artistic layers is effective in developing a comprehensive understanding of the processes of musical creativity in the dichotomy between tradition and innovation. Built into the composer’s idea, the communicative features of the artistic dialogue make it possible to outline the specifics of chamber music, its coordinates of cultural and artistic identification such as the internal artistic concept and the external artistic and stylistic space. In the interaction of the artist with various artistic fields, the author traces and identifies the patterns of development and vectors of innovation that influence the development of chamber music as a component of Ukrainian musical culture and contribute to its holistic understanding in the interdependence of artistic processes with European artistic trends and worldviews. The integrity of the expressive field of chamber and ensemble creativity is studied in several artistic and dialogical sections that reveal its essence and key changes. The components of the composer’s worldview and stylistic trends of the time establish the idea of the national character of Ukrainian chamber music of the early twentieth century, where the features of the late romantic style are embodied through Ukrainian coloristics, generous use of Ukrainian intonation and harmony complexes, genre models of folk art, programmatic approach, etc. This is confirmed by Mykola Lysenko’s search for chamber and ensemble genres by his followers, composers of the Halychyna school of composition of the first half of the twentieth century. A more complex version of the embodiment of national elements is the work of Borys Liatoshynsky, where entire creative periods of life are formed at the crossroads of Ukrainian and Slavic themes. Through the study of the composers’ schools, their professional, cultural and artistic attribution, two models of chamber music development are distinguished: hermetically academic, associated with the influences of Lysenko and his followers, and innovative, open to comprehensive genre and style transformations in the dialogical interdependence of academic tradition and experimental explorations, associated with the school of Liatoshynsky. The artistic dialogue in the communication of Ukrainian artists with the innovative processes of European stylistic discourse made it possible to trace the distinctive features of genre transformations in the chamber and instrumental music of the second half of the twentieth century and to identify their fundamental stages. Artistic dialogue is at the heart of the activities of performers of chamber and instrumental music, representing the dialogic nature of composers’ explorations and performers’ interpretations. The performing aspect is covered in several ways: as a process of organizing performance by the community of ensemble players; as a search for a coordinated position in the performing interpretation of the composer’s stylistic image; as a performing and stylistic embodiment of the author’s intention in ensemble interaction