Musical Nationalism - Ukraine

Ukraine

In Ukraine the term "Music nationalism" (музичний націоналізм) was coined by Stanyslav Lyudkevych in 1905 (Hrabovsky 2009,). The article under this title is devoted to Mykola Lysenko who is considered to be the father of Ukrainian classical music. Ludkevych concludes that Lysenko's nationalism was inspired by those of Glinka in Russian music, though western tradition, particularly German, is still significant in his music, especially instrumental.

V. Hrabovsky assumes that Stanyslav Lyudkevych himself could be considered as significant nacionalistic composer and musicologist thanks to his numerous composition under Unraine-devoted titles as well as numerous paper devoted to use of Urainian folk songs and poetry in Ukrainian classical music (Lyudkevych 1905).

Inspiration by Ukrainian folklore could be observed even earlier, particularly in compositions by Maksym Berezovsky (1745–1777) (Kornii 1998, 188), Dmytro Bortnyansky (1751–1825) (Kornii 1998, 296), Artem Vedel (1767–1808) (Kornii 1998, 311). Semen Hulak-Artemovsky (1813–1873) is considered as an author of the first Ukrainian opera (Zaporozhets za Dunayem, premièred in 1863). Lysenko's traditions were continued by, among others, Kyrylo Stetsenko (1882–1922), Mykola Leontovych (1877–1921), Yakiv Stepovy (1883–1921), Alexander Koshetz (1877–1944), and later, Levko Revutsky (1889–1977).

At the same time the term "nationalism" is not used in Ukrainian musicology (see for example Yutsevych 2009, where such term is missing). Moreover, the article "Music Nationalism" by Ludkevych was prohibited in the USSR (Hrabovsky 2009,) and was not widely known until its publication in 1999 (Lyudkevych 1999).