Franz Schubert established the art song as a poetic-musical form. His Gretchen am Spinnrade (1814) and Der Erlkönig (1815) defined the new genre. All in all, he wrote more than 600 songs. In Germany, Schubert was followed by other composers of art songs like Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf. In France composers like Gabriel Fauré, Jules Massenet and Claude Debussy contributed to the genre. Among the Slavic composers of art songs were Aleksandr S. Dargomyzhsky, Modest P. Mussorgsky and Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky in Russia, Antonín Dvorák in Bohemia, Stanislaw Moniuszko in Poland and Mykola Lysenko in Ukraine.

In every country the art song reflected the language, poetry and culture of the people. It was an expression of ethnic identity and national pride. Can you imagine a lied without the German text, a chanson without the French or a romans without the Russian? Ukrainian composers, however, were forced to break the law in order to write Ukrainian art songs. In 1876, Tsar Alexander II issued an edict, the Ems Ukase, which banned the use of the Ukrainian language in print, on stage and in music scores! Ukrainian composers and poets persevered. In the 20th century the tradition of the art song was continued by Kyrylo Stetsenko, Yakiv Stepovy, Borys Liatoshynsky, Yuli Meitus and Anatol Kos-Anatolsky.

Soviet society too was not conducive to the development of the Ukrainian art song. First of all, the genre represented a Western tradition. Soviet anti-formalist traditions vilified all aristocratic, intellectual and bourgeois elements in art. Nationalist sentiments were also suppressed in the Soviet Union. Without an audience, without any means to publish or disseminate music scores, without venues to perform in, the Ukrainian art song languished in oblivion. Meanwhile, folk songs sung by semi-professional artists and accompanied by ensembles of folk instruments became the new standard of Soviet vocal music. To this were added Soviet songs, which praised the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, Stalin, the Communist Party, the Red Army, the proletarian workers, etc.

During the 1950s and 1960s Ukrainian musicologists managed to publish editions of collected works of many Ukrainian composers. But this was more of a scholarly endeavour than an attempt to stimulate the performance of Ukrainian classical music. In the post-Soviet era, it is up to performers like Pavlo Hunka and others to discover and share these melodic treasures with the rest of the world.

By Wasyl Sydorenko