THE STATE OF UKRAINIAN INDEPENDENCE: An overview from Harvard: Contemporary music (08/25/96)

THE STATE OF UKRAINIAN INDEPENDENCE: An overview from Harvard

Contemporary music

by Yakov Goubanov

Music is one of the most advanced and developed areas of contemporary Ukrainian culture. The Kyiv composer Valentyn Sylvestrov is among the world's leading composers. Contemporary Ukrainian music is heard in the best concert halls of Ukraine, Russia, Western Europe and America, is recorded on CDs, is published by the most prestigious foreign firms and wins international competitions.

Yet the contemporary cultural situation in Ukraine has experienced a number of paradoxes, one of which is the dramatic contradiction between the world success of modern Ukrainian music and the catastrophic social-economic position of Ukrainian artists, many of whom experience violent and extreme poverty. Some of the most talented creative and performing artists have emigrated to seek greater artistic and material security abroad.

Contemporary Ukrainian music reacts with the sensitivity of a barometer to the condensation of the social-psychological atmosphere. Ukrainian music of every aesthetic orientation has seen an increase in the role of the spiritual. Sylvestrov has written a cantata to the text of the prayer "Our Father," using the traditions of Ukrainian religious music of the 17th to 19th centuries. Others have turned to the Roman Catholic tradition, as in Viktoria Poleva's "Mass"; to the Jewish, such as Yakiv Tseglar in his vocal-symphonic canvas "The Jewish Tragedy," which combines the traditions of classical Ukrainian oratorio with the tonal-melodic synagogue chant; and to the Buddhist, such as Liudmyla Yuryna's work to texts of the holy Tibetan mantras, reflecting a mood found primarily among urban youth.

Ukrainian music is supposed to be aided in its development by the Composers' Union, which promotes the performance of musical works written in Ukraine. The Stalinist structure of the union, however, has been preserved in all its absurdity. The same immense, hierarchical bureaucracy continues on, consuming a considerable annual budget of around $360,000 and it serves only 80 composers, who in fact feel that they receive little if any direct benefit from the union! Associations within the union can still be formed only along the principle of genre, not according to aesthetic aims or compositional technique.

In 1993 an alternative organization appeared under the name National League of Ukrainian Composers, but it was created over the question of nationality; according to the regulations of the alternative union, the members can be only ethnic Ukrainians. On the one hand it is indisputable that the problem of the rebirth of Ukrainian national self-consciousness is one of the most vital facing the nation at present, but on the other hand it is impossible to construct a democratic society on artificially fanned national antagonism.

Paradox is thus one of the distinguishing features of the contemporary cultural situation in Ukraine. This can be seen in the authoritarian and bureaucratic mechanism of the Composers' Union becoming the guarantor of the freedom of creative quests and stylistic directions; the equality of all members of society coexisting with rigid hierarchy within the artistic associations; and the striving of the Ukrainian people for national self-determination and self-affirmation being interwoven with legalized genetic segregation.

Given this situation, it can hardly be surprising that a new artistic tendency, the "musical theater of the absurd" has taken on a distinctive role. Work, for instance, of the Kyiv composer Serhiy Zazhytko reflects the surrealism of the surrounding world. In his whimsically grotesque and yet realistic work, the psychological disintegration of the individual into the rational and irrational components of the human psyche becomes an allegorical metaphor for the splintering of the social consciousness.

Polystylistic work, also, which constructs the sound fabric out of polar opposite components, reflects the inexhaustible multifacetedness of the spectrum of contemporary life. The colorful mixture of styles, techniques and devices of polystylistics produces a whimsical sound kaleidoscope in which the universe appears broken into thousands of sharp fantastically sparkling splinters.

Such metaphors provide insight into this particular moment in time in Ukraine, allowing us to sense the strained rhythm of historical evolution, to listen to the depths of the polyphony of the times in which are to be found the elevated eternal, the dramatic present and the tragic past. The counterpoint of the past, the present and the eternal serves as a distinguishing sign both of the social as well as the cultural life of today's Ukraine.

Yakov Goubanov is a concert pianist and composer, and professor of both the history of music and composition at Kyiv State Conservatory. He is a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory and did post-graduate studies at the Kyiv State Conservatory and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.