Turning the pages back... January 3, 1895 (12/31/00)

Turning the pages back...

January 3, 1895

One of the initiators and main representatives of the modern school of Ukrainian music was Borys Liatoshynsky. Born in Zhytomyr on January 3, 1895, he graduated with a law degree from Kyiv University in 1918. In 1915 he had composed his first formal work, a string quartet, and when revolution broke over the country he took the opportunity to pursue his muse.

Liatoshynsky completed the course of study at the Kyiv Conservatory in a year (under the composer-conductor Reinhold Glière), and produced his second work, now on a grand scale, his Symphony in A.

In 1920 he was given a lectureship in music theory at the Kyiv Conservatory and composed the "Marche Fantastique" for orchestra. Liatoshynsky also became one of the founding members of the Association of Contemporary Music, established as a branch of an international society that united composers oriented towards innovative movements in Western music, such as expressionism, constructivism and jazz. (He served as the ASM's chairman in 1922-1925; it was abolished by Stalin's decree in April 1932.)

True to the Western leanings of the ASM, in the early 1920s Liatoshynsky composed song-cycles to the lyrics of Heinrich Heine, Maurice Maeterlink, Percy Byshe Shelley, Paul Verlaine and Oscar Wilde, among others. In 1925, he struck out further, finding inspiration in the classical poetry of China.

In 1926, in the spirit of the Ukrainization policy, he completed the "Overture on Four Ukrainian Folk Themes," but brought the style of the emotional Russian Aleksandr Scriabin (an early influence) to bear on traditional Ukrainian motifs.

In 1927, he edited and arranged Mykola Lysenko's score for a comic opera based on Ivan Kotliarevsky's "Eneïda," and also began drawing on the works of Taras Shevchenko. In 1929, Liatoshynsky wrote a four-act opera, "Zolotyi Obruch" (The Golden Ring) based on Ivan Franko's novella "Zakhar Berkut." In the early 1930s, he composed film scores for the feature-length entertainments "Karmeliuk" and "Ivan" and produced choral arrangements of Ukrainian folk (Kozak era) songs.

Appointed professor of composition at the Kyiv Conservatory in 1935, that year he also began a three-year term as adjunct professor of orchestration at the Moscow Conservatory. He then wrote another opera, "Schors" (to a libretto by Maksym Rylsky and Ivan Kocherha) and two cantatas for chorus and orchestra, including the influential "Urochysta Kantata," but kept his second symphony (composed in 1935-1936, not published until after the war) secret.

Liatoshynsky was evacuated to Saratov, Russia, as the Nazis advanced on Kyiv, and there he composed cantatas, romances and song-cycles to works by Ukrainian poets, such as Franko, Lev Pervomaisky, Maksym Rylsky and Volodymyr Sosiura, as well as a quartet for woodwinds and a range of quintets for strings.

After the war, in 1948 and in 1952, he was attacked for "formalism." The first onslaught quieted him, but the second seemed to embolden Liatoshynsky and he defiantly produced major works including the "Taras Shevchenko" suite (1952), and the "Slavic Concerto" for piano and orchestra (1953).

In the post-Stalin thaw, Liatoshynsky continued to produce film scores, including for biopics about Franko (with Mykola Kolessa, 1956) and Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1959). He also plunged into his "Polish period" that included a romance-cycle to Adam Mickiewicz's lyric and a symphonic poem about the Vistula River. He also honored his teacher, Glière, by completing his "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra" in 1956.

In the 1960s, Liatoshynsky wrote the "Slavic Suite" for symphony orchestra (1966), three more symphonies, seven more film scores and composed a symphonic poem in Glière's memory in 1964. In all, he composed over 100 works.

Borys Liatoshynsky died on April 15, 1968 in Kyiv.

Sources: "Liatoshynsky, Borys," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Ihor & Natalia Sonevytski, Dictionary of Ukrainian Composers (Lviv: Union of Ukrainian Composers, 1997); Viktor Samokhvalov, Borys Liatoshynsky (Kyiv: Muzychna Ukraina, 1974).

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