Four Centuries of Great Music May 1, 2022 Music by Ukrainian Composers

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Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are celebrating the music by Ukrainian composers and I dedicate this show to the brave men and women of Ukraine who are fighting to oppose Russian military in the Russian genocidal war against Ukraine.  Throughout this episode I will be mentioning a way for you to contribute to the Ukrainian relief effort that was shared with me by two Ukranian pianists who I know  and that is through Razom for Ukraine at https://razomforukraine.org

And we are opening with the Ukrainian National Anthem (Ukraine’s Glory Hasn’t Perished) - Single    Glocal Orchestra 

We are beginning our exploration of Ukrainian classical music with three composers who Ukrainian musicologists call the “Golden Three”

Artemy Lukyanovich Vedel (1767 – 1808), born Artemy Lukyanovich Vedelsky, was a Ukrainian composer of liturgical music, and made an important contribution in the music history of Ukraine. Together with Maxim Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortniansky, Vedel is recognized as one of the 'Golden Three' composers of 18th century Ukrainian classical music.   Musicologists consider him to the archetypal composer of Ukrainian music from the Baroque era.  He was born in  He was accused of writing against the royal family of Russia and authorities in Russia censored his music and he was imprisoned - another example of Russian suppression of Ukrainian culture.    He died in 1808 in K

Artemy Lukyanovich Vedel :Choir Concerto, Op. 25:  I. Adagio - II. Allegro moderato -  III. Largo - IV. Allegro


Maxim Berezovsky    Born in Hlukhiv. 1742-1745 with initial training at the Kyiv Theological Academy but continued training St. Petersburg    .  Traveled to Italy for training and composition and dying in 1777 back in St. Petersburg having never returned to the Ukraine.  He is considered part of the 'Golden Three’ because of the influence of Ukrainian folk music in his music.

In the early 2000s, thanks to the efforts of American conductor Stephen Fox, Maxim Berezovsky's lost work, Symphony in C, also known in Ukraine as Symphony No. 1, was found in the Vatican archives. After its discovery,  in Russia as part of it’s continuing cultural appropriation, it was immediately attributed to the country's cultural heritage and called the "First Russian Symphony". However, Ukrainian conductor Kyrylo Karabyts stated publicly in 2016 that this is  clearly the work of a Ukrainian composer.

Maxim Berezovsky: Sonate für Violine und Klavier: I. Allegro   II. Grave   III.  Minuetto con 6 variazioni 


Dmitry Bortniansky was born in 1751 also in the city of Hlukhiv.  But showing talent at an early age, he was sent to St. Petersburg for training and also never returned to Ukraine. After training in St. Petersburg and in Italy, he returned to St. Petersburg and became a prolific composer while at the Saint Petersburg Court Capella and was appointed director of the Imperial Chapel choir in 1796, the first to be appointed from the Russian empire.  In that role he was very prolific composing many works which included at least 100 religious works, sacred concertos, cantatas, and hymns.   Bortniansky died in St. Petersburg in 1825.  Although he never returns to Ukraine,  traditionally, Ukrainian musicologists emphasize the use of intonations of Ukrainian folk songs in his choral work, since the composer's first musical impressions were obtained in Ukraine, Ukrainians were also most of Bortnyansky's friends in the Imperial Chapel choir and one of his teachers in St. Petersburg Marko Poltoratsky.  The influence of Bortnyansky's work is noted in the works of Ukrainian composers Mykola Lysenko, Levko Revutsky, and Mykola Leontovych.   He is known for his instrumental music as well as his choral music.

Dmitry Bortniansky:   Quintet in C Major for Piano, Harp, Violin, Viola da gamba and Cello: I. Allegro moderato   II. Larghetto   III. Allegro   


Let’s begin this second hour of the show by jumping ahead about 50 years to the father of modern Ukrainian classical music Mykola Lysenko in the late 1800s.  Mykola Lysenko was a skilled pianist, composer,  conductor, ethnomusicologist, and Ukrainian cultural patriot.  Lysenko was born in Hrynky in 1842.  Lysenko studied music at an early age, first from the piano instruction of his mother.  At the age of nine Lysenko was brought to Kyiv to continue musical study in boarding schools.  Lysenko attended the Gymnasium of Kharkiv, and studied natural sciences at the city's university, and later at the University of Kiev.   He pursued further music studies at the Leipzig Conservatory, Germany, from 1867 to 1869, where his primary teachers included composer Carl Reinecke (Rye-Knee-Kah) for piano as well as Ernst Richter for composition and theory.

Lysenko concluded that music the best way he could express his patriotism, and collected and published seven volumes of arrangements and transcriptions of Ukrainian folk songs between 1868 and 1911.  He also Later in his life he created an independent school of Ukrainian music, the Ukrainian School of Music, known as the Lysenko Music School in Kyiv.  Throughout his life, he was in conflict with Russian authorities.  The Ems Ukaz decree of 1876 banned use of Ukrainian language in print, was one of the obstacles for Lysenko; he had to publish many of his scores abroad, while performances of his music were often rejected by the imperial censor.   For his opera libretti Lysenko insisted on using only the Ukrainian language. He was intent on promoting and elevating the Ukrainian culture so that he refused to allow his opera Taras Bulba to be translated and maintained that it was too ambitious to be staged in Ukrainian opera houses. Tchaikovsky was a supporter of Lysenko’s music and was so impressed by the opera and wanted to stage the work in Moscow.   However, Lysenko’s insistence on it being performed in the Ukrainian language, not Russian, prevented the performance from taking place.

Lets start our exploration of the music of Lysenko with three songs.  1. “A Falling Star” a traditional Ukrainian song arranged by Lysenko,; 2. the art song “A Coral Necklace”  and 3.  the art song “The Dnieper River Rages”


We have talked about Levko Revutsky in my “Evening Eclectic show of April 17th with Anna and Dmitri Shelest.  Enough to state here that Revutsky studied piano with Mykola Lysenko and was greatly influence by his music.  Here are two preludes from his Op. 7 preludes:   No.1 in E-flat & No.2 in B-flat minor



Next some music by Mykola Leontovych  Born in 1877, he was both a musician and composer but also a political activist.  With the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, there was the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918.  This was overthrown by Russian army forces.  Leontovych continued to work for the resistance to restore a free Ukraine and was assassinated by a Russian agent who after assassinating Leontovych looted his family’s home.   An early example of Russian war crimes that are again today being committed against Ukraine.  

He is recognised for composing Shchedryk in 1904 (which premiered in 1916), known to the English-speaking world as Carol of the Bells or Ring, Christmas Bells. He is known as a martyr in the Eastern Orthodox Ukrainian Church, where he is also remembered for his liturgy, the first liturgy composed in the vernacular, specifically in the modern Ukrainian language.    

Lets listen to two works by Mykola Leontovych: In Thy Kingdom (Matthew 5:3-12)   and Shchedryk (Ukraine) 


Borys Lyatoshynsky was considered one of the new generation of Ukrainian composers.   He studied composition with Rheinhold Gliere  at the Kyiv Conservatory.  He was influenced both by the folk music of his native Ukraine but also by Alexander Scriabin, Richard Wagner and the atonality of the second Viennese school of composers.  His work in Kyiv and later at the Moscow conservatory in the 1920s, 30s and 40s were very progressive and met with a lot of resistance from musical authorities to the point that in 1948 he wrote “I will be a participant of this forthcoming Conference (National Conference of the Composers in Moscow), not a composer. My 3rd Symphony cannot be performed and my ‘old’ works remain, are disregarded by everyone and they are banned from performances”.  With the death of Stalin and the loosing of the tight control over music performance, his music gained new respect.  He won several awards and prizes before his death in 1968.

Borys Lyatoshynsky Five Preludes, Op. 44 written in 1943.


We are ending today’s show on Ukrainian composers with Valentin Silvestrov.   Valentin Silvestrov was born in  1937 in Kyiv.

He began private music lessons at age 15. He studied piano at the Kyiv Evening Music School from 1955 to 1958, then at the Kyiv Conservatory from 1958 to 1964. At the Kyiv Conservatory he studied composition under Borys Lyatoshynsky, harmony and counterpoint under Levko Revutsky continuing the continuity of Ukrainian composers and Ukrainian music.

Early in his career as a composer, he concentrated on avantgarde music and became political.  He walked out of a major new music composers convention in the Soviet Union to protest the Soviet invasion Czechoslovakia.   In 1974, under pressure to conform to both official precepts of socialist realism and fashionable modernism, and likewise to apologize for his walkout from a composers' meeting to protest the Soviet Union invasion of Czechoslovakia, Silvestrov chose to withdraw from the spotlight. In this period he began to move toward his present post-modernist style of music.  Later, after the fall of the Soviet Union, he also began to compose spiritual and religious works influenced by the style of Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox liturgical music.    Now using traditional tonal and modal techniques, Silvestrov creates a unique and delicate tapestry of dramatic and emotional textures, qualities which he suggests are otherwise sacrificed in much of contemporary music.   He has said. "I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.”   Elements of Ukrainian nationalism occur in some of Silvestrov's works, most notably in his choral work Diptych. This work sets the strongly patriotic words of Taras Shevchenko's 1845 poem Testament, which has a significance to national identity of Ukraine, and Silvestrov dedicated it in 2014 to the memory of Serhiy Nigoyan, an Armenian-Ukrainian who died in the 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots and is believed to have been the first Euromaidan uprising casualty that led to the Revolution of Dignity.  So that is the piece that I want to end today’s show

Valentin Silvestrov: Diptych: Testament