Ukrainian music covers diverse and multiple component elements of the music that is found in the Western and Eastern musical civilization. It also has a very strong indigenous Slavic and Christian uniqueness whose elements were used among the areas that surround modern Ukraine.[1]
Ukraine is also the rarely acknowledged musical heartland of the former Russian Empire, home to its first professional music academy, which opened in the mid-18th century and produced numerous early musicians and composers.[2]
Modern Ukraine is situated north of the Black Sea, previously part of the Soviet Union. Several of its ethnic groups living within Ukraine have their own unique musical traditions and some have developed specific musical traditions in association with the land in which they live.
Ukraine found itself at the crossroads of Asia and Europe and this is reflected within the music in a perplexing mix of exotic melismatic singing with chordal harmony which does not always easily fit the rules of traditional Western European harmony. The most striking general characteristic of authentic ethnic Ukrainian folk music is the wide use of minor modes or keys which incorporate augmented 2nd intervals. This is an indication that the major-minor system developed in Western European music did not become as entrenched in Ukraine.
Rhythmically the music rarely uses complex time-signatures, but compound meters are encountered, and the music can be extremely complex harmonically.
Harmonically three and even four part harmony had developed and was recorded in the central steppe regions of Ukraine, but was not in popular use in the mountain regions by the late 19th century.
Ritual songs show the greatest tendency to preservation. They are frequently in recitative style, essentially monodic, based on notes in the range of a third or a fourth. An example of this style is the theme for the Shchedrivka "Shchedryk" known in the West as "Carol of the Bells".
A large group of Ukrainian ritual melodies fall within a perfect fourth with the main central tone as the lowest note. Many of the ritual Easter melodies known as Haivky fall into this category. The tetrachordal system is also found in wedding and harvest songs. Folk dances often have melodies based on two tetrachords fused together.
The pentatonic scale in anhemitonic form is common in spring songs known as Vesnianky.
The bulk of Ukrainian folk songs melodies are based on scales identical to mеdieval modes, but differ in melodic structure. The Mixolydian and Dorian modes are used more often than Ionian and Aeolian modes. This is a feature of traditional paraliturgical Koliadky.
The augmented 2nd interval is found, as well as the raising of the fourth and seventh degree of the scale. It is often used for melodic expression. This melodic manner gives an effect that is described as adding severe tension or sadness in some Ukrainian songs. The phenomenon is not found in Russian folk songs and is thought to have been introduced or developed in the 17th century.
Ukrainian folk song singing style can be divided into a number of broad aesthetic categories.
1. Solo singing – primarily ritual songs including holosinnya sung at wakes.
2. Solo singing with instrumental accompaniment by professional itinerant singers known as kobzari or lirnyky. The highest form of development of this style of singing can be seen in the lyric historical folk epics known as dumy sung to the accompaniment of the bandura, kobza or lira (lirnyk). Dumy were sung primarily in the dorian mode.
3. The third is an archaic type of modal "a cappella" vocal style in which a phrase sung by a soloist is answered by a choral phrase in 2- or 3- voice vertical polyphony/heterophony/harmony. The vocal inflection here is quite mediaeval in character, and some peculiarities of distinctly Ukrainian flavor are noticeable, such as parallel fifths and octaves, and several types of plagal cadences. This type of song, once dominant, after 1650 has ceded its hegemony to the newer tonal types, but can still be found in isolated villages. This style is evident in the "Koliadka" and "Shchedryk".
4. The other vocal styles are marked by the influences exerted by European music, by paraliturgical music of Danylo Tuptalo and his circle in the early 18th century, and later by classical music and urban culture.
Ukrainian vocal music exhibits a wide variety of forms – monodic, heterophonic, homophonic, harmonic and polyphonic.
One of the most active proponents of Ukrainian vocal music is Nina Matviyenko, along with recently established groups dedicated to the preservation of traditional polyphony such as "Bozhychi", "Hurtopravci", "Volodar", "Korali" and "Drevo". Popular folk songs include:
Soviet postage stamp depicting traditional Ukrainian musical instruments
Common traditional instruments include: the kobza (lute), bandura, torban (bass lute), violin, basolya (3-string cello), the relya or lira (hurdy-gurdy) and the tsymbaly; the sopilka (duct flute), floyara (open, end-blown flute), trembita (alpenhorn), fife, volynka (bagpipes); and the buben (frame drum), tulumbas (kettledrum), resheto (tambourine) and drymba/varhan (Jaw harp). Traditional instrumental ensembles are often known as troïstï muzyki (literally ‘three musicians’ that typically make up the ensemble, e.g. violin, sopilka and buben). When performing dance melodies instrumental performance usually includes improvisation.
Early in the 20th century, Pavlo Humeniuk of Philadelphia became famous in North America for his fiddle music.
Vocal-instrumental folk music and performers
Ostap Veresai, the most famous Ukrainian kobzar of the 19th century, and his wife Kulyna
Although most instrumental dance music in Ukraine can be sung to, there exist in Ukraine a group of professional folk musicians who sing to their own accompaniment. These itinerant musicians were generically called kobzari (kobzar – singular), and accompanied their singing with the kobza, bandura, or lira. Although their origins stretch back to antiquity, their repertoire and customs directly date back to the 17th century in which they depict the period of the conflicts between the Kozaks and various foreign oppressors. There were many cases of those folk singers being blind which became a stereotype in the cultural memory.
Kobzari
The kobzari organized themselves into regional professional guild-like structures, known as a "Kobzar Guild".
During Soviet era almost all of the traditional kobzari were killed, the bulk perishing during Stalin's "purges" during the 1930s. Even the instrument, kobza and bandura, were prohibited and confiscated, a practice of the Ukrainian ethnocide that continued after the fall of the Russian Empire.
Under the inspiration of noted traditional bandurist Heorhiy Tkachenko a Kobzar Guild was re-established in 1991 in Kyiv by Mykola Budnyk in order to revive and foster the ancient kobzar traditions. The Guild unites many singer-musicians in Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora. Many of its members are not formally Conservatory trained.
Soviet-inspired folk music
With the establishment of the Soviet regime in Ukraine a policy based on state atheism was instituted which gradually grew to an intolerance to organized religion. Religious music was not supported by the regime and in time was purged from performance. Many aspects of classical music were also branded as being bourgeois and decadent.
A movement was started in the 20s for "Proletarian songs" – music of the working people. In time it was noticed that this music only catered for the working classes in the cities and did not take into account the large percentage of Ukrainian peasants living in village setting. As a consequence, songs of the village were also defined as being also from the working class. Resulting from this reclassification the Soviet government began to give significant support to this form of music. Hence, various "fakeloric" ensembles came into existence. After World War II huge resources continued to be given to support this style of music in order to displace the onslaught of mass culture from the West.
Numerous folk choirs were established such as the Veriovka folk choir directed by Hryhoriy Veriovka. A stylized dance troupe was established by Pavlo Virsky based on a synthesis of ethnographic dance and ballet. Particularly popular were the numerous Bandurist Capellas. These particular pseudo-folk forms blending ethnographic materials in an art setting have also become popular in the Ukrainian diaspora in North America.
Bandura
In North America pseudo-folk or "reconstructive" bandurists such as Zinoviy Shtokalko, Hryhoriy Kytasty, Julian Kytasty, Victor Mishalow, et al. have played a significant role in defining Ukrainian ethnicity in the New World, while fusing traditional musical material with new possibilities offered by contemporary instruments.
Music of non-Ukrainian ethnic minorities
Of the traditional musics of non-Ukrainian ethnic minorities living in Ukraine possibly the richest and most developed is that of Jewish music (including Klezmer, cantorial, Yiddish-language folksongs, and Yiddish theatre music) which can trace most of its origins to the Jewish Pale of Settlement and to South-western Ukraine. It is estimated that one third of the total Jewish population of Europe lived on Ukrainian ethnic territory at the turn of the 19th century. Therefore a number of Soviet and Russian Empire Jewish folklorists collected and documented Jewish music primarily in Ukraine, including S. Ansky, Susman Kiselgof, Moisei Beregovsky, Joel Engel, and Sofia Magid. Many of these collected works are now in the possession of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine.
Russian music has also had a strong base for development in Ukraine. Many of the early performers on Russian folk instruments came from Ukraine and these performers often included Ukrainian melodies in their repertoire. The 4 string Russian domra continues to be used and taught in Ukraine despite the fact that it has been replaced by the 3 string domra in Russia proper.
During the Baroque period, music was an important discipline for those that had received a higher education in Ukraine. It had a place of considerable importance in the curriculum of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Much of the nobility was well versed in music with many Ukrainian Cossack leaders such as (Mazepa, Paliy, Holovatyj, Sirko) being accomplished players of the kobza, bandura, or torban.
In the course of the 18th century in the Russian Empire, court musicians were typically trained at the music academy in Hlukhiv and largely came from Ukraine. Notable performers of the era include Tymofiy Bilohradsky, who later studied the lute under Sylvius Leopold Weiss in Dresden; his daughter Yelyzaveta, who was a famous operatic soprano; and Oleksiy Rozumovsky, a court bandurist and the morganatic husband of Empress Elizabeth.
The first professional music academy of the Russian Empire was established in Ukraine in Hlukhiv in 1738, the Hlukhiv Music Academy, where students were taught to sing and play violin and bandura from manuscripts. As a result, many of the earliest composers and performers of the Russian empire were ethnically Ukrainian, having been born or educated in Hlukhiv or having been closely associated with this music school.
During the 19th century, musical nationalism arose in Europe, characterized by an emphasis on national musical elements, and associated with the growth of national consciousness of European peoples. A Ukrainian nationalist movement in music appeared during the late 19th century. Ukrainian writers, poets, and professional musicians used folklore to arrange folk songs. The opening of the first professional theatres in Kyiv (1803) and Odesa (1810), which staged works on national themes, played an important role in the formation of Ukrainian opera. the first of which was Zaporozhets za Dunayem by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky (1863).
A key figure in the development of Ukrainian nationalist music during the 19th century was the composer, conductor and pianist Mykola Lysenko,[3] whose compositions include nine operas, and music for piano. He used Ukrainian poetry, including that of the poet Taras Shevchenko. In 1904, Lysenko opened the Russian empire's first Ukrainian music school in Kiev (now the Lysenko State Music and Drama Institute[uk]). He is credited with establishing a classical music tradition that was a blend of folk music and classical music forms.[3]
In the period of the Liberation War numerous Ukrainian artistic groups were created. The Government of the Ukrainian State has taken a consistent position in the field of cultural development, including music, as evidenced by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers on the mobilization of literary, scientific, artistic and technical forces of Ukraine. In particular, by the decree of Pavel Skoropadsky in 1918, the State Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, the Ukrainian State Chapel, the First and Second National Choirs were established. The Kyiv opera was named the Ukrainian Drama and Opera Theater, and a significant number of world-famous operas have been translated into Ukrainian. Also in 1918, the Kobzar Choir was founded, which would later be revived as the State Bandura Chapel.
Soviet Romantic school
The arrival of Soviet authorities in Ukraine was marked by a number of tragic events. In 1921, Leontovych was killed by an agent of the Cheka, and in 1928 the society in his memory were banned. Ukrainian art suffered the worst losses in the 1930s, during which the Soviet authorities exterminated several hundred bandura players, kobzars, and lyre players, and in 1938, musician and ethnographer Hnat Khotkevych was shot among other artists of the "shot revival."
At the same time, the Soviet authorities opened a number of music institutions in various cities of Ukraine. In particular, these are opera and ballet theaters in Kharkiv (1925), Poltava (1928), Vinnytsia (1929), Dnipropetrovsk (1931), Donetsk (1941), choral and symphonic groups were organized. According to the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party "On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organizations" in 1932, The Union of Soviet Musicians of Ukraine (later - "Union of Composers") was organized and entrusted with the functions of ideological control over compositions by Ukrainian composers.
The 1960s are marked by the breakthrough of the Ukrainian school of composition on the world stage, the mastery of the latest trends in European musical culture. A group of Kyiv Avant-Garde artists is being formed in Kyiv, which includes composers such as Valentyn Silvestrov, Leonid Grabovsky, Vitaliy Godziatsky, and Volodymyr Guba. The central figure in this group was the conductor Igor Blazhkov. As a result of differences with the retrograde tendencies of the official musical circles of the USSR, the members of the "Kyiv avant-garde" were subjected to various kinds of oppression.
In the 1970s and 1980s, composers became famous who expanded the traditional late Romantic style for Ukrainian music through the latest techniques of European modernism - Myroslav Skoryk, Yevhen Stankovych, Ivan Karabyts, Lev Kolodub, and others. Among composers of Ukrainian diaspora - Virko Baley.
There are also musicians in Ukraine (Kostyantyn Chechenya, Vadym Borysenko) and in diaspora (Volodymyr Smishkevych, Julian Kytasty, Roman Turovsky) who have been preserving Ukrainian music of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Eras.
Pop music
Pop music in Ukraine is Western influenced pop music in its various forms that has been growing in popularity in Ukraine since the 1960s. The 1970s saw the emergence of a number of folk rock groups such as Kobza. Major contributions were made by songwriter Volodymyr Ivasyuk, Oleksandr Bilash. After Ivasyuk's death in 1979, developments in Ukrainian pop music almost ground to a halt. Even established folk-rock groups such as Kobza began to sing in Russian.
The revival of Ukrainian pop music emerged in 1990s after Ukraine gained an independence. The Chervona Ruta Festival played an important role in popularisation and evolution of the modern Ukrainian song. In 2004 Ruslana was a first Ukrainian singer who won the Eurovision Song Contest.
Until the Russo-Ukrainian War broke out in 2014, the Russian language was widely used by Ukrainian artists in order to also reach audiences outside Ukraine who could understand Russian.[4] Russian-language songs gradually lost popularity in Ukraine after 2014, while Ukrainian-language music experienced a surge; this trend accelerated when the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.[4] Muzvar music journalist Julian Novak stated in July 2022: 'Many popular artists have decided to switch to the Ukrainian language, and change their existing Russian-language repertoire to Ukrainian.'[4] The war became an increasingly prominent theme in songs, with lyrics about consolation in trying times of losing loved ones and having to flee one's home and country, but also the courage to go on.[4] New musical tracks from Ukraine also incorporated ever more elements of Ukrainian folklore, such as the remake of a traditional lullaby by Eurovision Song Contest 2022 winner "Stefania", and the use of the traditional flute.[4]
Mykola Leontovych. 1877–1921. Composer. Best known worldwide for his arrangement of Shchedryk, which became known in North America as "Carol of the Bells."
Levko Revutsky. 1889–1977. Composer, teacher, and activist. Known for introducing Ukrainian music motives combined with western composing style.
Dmytro Bortniansky. 1751–1825. Ukrainian liturgical composer. Born Hlukhiv, Ukraine.
Roman Miroshnichenko 1977– jazz-fusion guitarist, composer, producer. Independent Music Awards winner.
Virko Baley Composer. Conductor of Las Vegas Symphony.
Dmitri Tiomkin 1899–1979. Born Poltava, Ukraine. American film composer (Academy Award for score of movie High Noon, also best song from that movie "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling"). A U.S.A. postage stamp was issued in his honor.
Stepan Rak, b. 1945, Prolific Czech composer and guitarist. "... identifies the village Chust in Ukraine as the place where the newborn infant, who was later christened as Stepan Rak, was found by Soviet soldiers in a bomb-wrecked house."
Reinhold Gliere – Ballet "Taras Bulba" based on Gogol's Novella
Mikhail Glinka – romances "Don't chirp the nightingale" ("Не щебечи соловейку") and "The wind is blowing loudly in the field" ("Гуде вітер вельми в полі"), both on Ukrainian lyrics by V. Zabila.
Joseph Haydn – String quartet no. 20. opus 9 no. 2
Franz Liszt - Mazeppa (first performed in 1854). Liszt's sixth symphonic poem, Ballade d'Ukraine, is based on the poem of the same title written by Victor Hugo. Mazeppa is a Ukrainian nobleman who became a page at the court of John II Casimir Vasa, King of Poland. As punishment for having a love affair with the wife of a Podoliancount, Mazeppa is tied naked onto a wild horse that heads toward Ukraine. The horse collapses and dies, and Mazeppa is saved by Ukrainian Cossacks, who then name him as their leader. Led by Mazeppa, the Ukrainians are victorious in battle.[6]
Alexander Dargomyzhsky – "Kozachok" ("Cossack"), one of three orchestral works composed. Written in 1864, it was based on the Kozachok, a traditional Ukrainian dance.[7]
Quincy Porter – Ukrainian Suite (1925) for string orchestra. A meticulously constructed and melodic piece based on a number of Ukrainian folk tunes, the Suite was written before Porter developed his mature style.[13]
Dmitri Kabalevsky – A Ukrainian folk tune is incorporated into the first movement of Kabalevsky's Violin Concerto in C major (1948). which was "composed with young virtuosi in mind".[15]
Scholarship
The Polyphony Project, which is funded in part by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, and which aims to "explore, preserve and present the living musical folklore of Ukrainian villages", has an online archive of Ukrainian folk music.[16]
A bandura is a Ukrainian plucked-string folk-instrument. It combines elements of the zither and lute and, up until the 1940s, was also often called a kobza. Early instruments had 5 to 12 strings and resembled lutes. In the 20th century, the number of strings increased initially to 31 strings (1926), then to 56 strings – 68 strings on modern "concert" instruments (1954).
Mykola Vitaliiovych Lysenko was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist of the late Romantic period. In his time he was the central figure of Ukrainian music, with an oeuvre that includes operas, art songs, choral works, orchestral and chamber pieces, and a wide variety of solo piano music. He is often credited with founding a national music tradition during the Ukrainian national revival, in the vein of contemporaries such as Grieg in Norway, The Five in Russia as well as Smetana and Dvořák in what is now the Czech Republic.
The kobza, also called bandura is a Ukrainian folk music instrument of the lute family, a relative of the Central European mandora. The term kobza however, has also been applied to a number of other Eastern European instruments distinct from the Ukrainian kobza.
Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych was a Ukrainian composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, and teacher. His music was inspired by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko and the Ukrainian National Music School. Leontovych specialised in a cappella choral music, ranging from original compositions to church music to elaborate arrangements of folk music.
A kobzar was an itinerant Ukrainian bard who sang to his own accompaniment, played on a multistringed kobza or bandura.
"Shchedryk" is a Ukrainian shchedrivka, or New Year's song, known in English as "The Little Swallow". It was arranged by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych between 1901 and 1919. The song tells a story of a swallow flying into a household to sing of the wealth that will come with the following spring. "Shchedryk" was originally sung on the night of January 13, New Year's Eve in the Julian Calendar, known in Ukraine as Malanka or Shchedry Vechir. Early performances of the piece were made by students at Kyiv University.
Dumka is a musical term introduced from the Ukrainian language, with cognates in other Slavic languages. The word dumka literally means "thought". Originally, it was the diminutive form of the Ukrainian term duma, pl. dumy, "a Slavic epic ballad … generally thoughtful or melancholic in character". Classical composers drew on the harmonic patterns in the folk music to inform their more formal classical compositions.
Kobzarskyi Tsekh, literally "Kobzar guild", is an organization of kobzars, which have existed since the 17th century in Ukraine.
Ostap Mykytovych Veresai was a renowned minstrel and kobzar from the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire. He helped to popularize kobzar art both within Ukraine and beyond. He is noted for influencing both scholarly and popular approaches to minstrelsy.
Vasyl' Kuzmych Shevchenko was one of the most active Ukrainian bandurists and torbanists at the turn of the 19-20th century.
The Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus is a semi-professional male choir which accompanies itself with the multi-stringed Ukrainian ethnic instrument known as the bandura. It traces its roots to Ukraine in 1918 and has been based in the USA since 1949.
Hryhoriy Trokhymovych Kytasty was a Ukrainian émigré composer and conductor. In 2008, he was honored with the Hero of Ukraine state decoration.
A Kuban bandurist is a person who plays the Ukrainian plucked string instrument known as the bandura, who is from Kuban, a geographic region of southern Russia surrounding the Kuban River.
Pop music in Ukraine is Western influenced pop music in its various forms that has been growing in popularity in Ukraine since the 1960s.
Ukrainian folk music includes a number of varieties of traditional, folkloric, folk-inspired popular music, and folk-inspired European classical music traditions.
Taras Bulba is an opera in four acts by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko. The libretto was written for Lysenko by his cousin, the playwright Mykhailo Starytsky, and is based on the novella Taras Bulba, written by the Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol, himself of Ukrainian origin. The story is about a Cossack who discovers his son has betrayed his people, and kills him.
Yuriy Fedynsky is a Ukrainian-American composer, musician, singer-songwriter, producer, bandleader, luthier, cultural activist, and pedagogue. Fedynsky performs on kobza, torban, and traditional bandura.
Mykola Petrovych Budnyk was a luthier and traditional performer in the Kobzar tradition. He was active in authentic construction and recreation of historic folk instruments, and involved in the movement for authentic performаnce practice on Ukrainian folk instruments. Budnyk was also known as a painter and poet. He was born in 1954 in Skolobiv, near Khoroshiv, Zhytomyr region, and died January 16, 2001, in Irpin', Kyiv region.
The Mykola Lysenko House-Museum is one of the museums of outstanding figures of Ukrainian culture in Kyiv. It is located in the house of the teacher Mykola Gvozdik, where the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko rented the 2nd floor from August 1894 to November 1912.
Kobza is a vocal and instrumental ensemble of Ukraine from the 1970s and 1980s. VIA "Kobza" was the first of the bands of the former Soviet Union to go on a commercial tour on the American continent (1982). The original band leader was Oleksandr Zuev. One of the songwriters and current bandleader is Yevhen Kovalenko.
Kochan, Alexis; Kytasty, Julian (1999). "The Bandura Played On". In Broughton, Simon; Ellingham, Mark (eds.). World Music. Vol.1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East. London: Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN978-1-85828-636-5.
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