Tag Archives: Soviet

A humble composer’s tribute to Stalin

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For me, one of the most fascinating subjects in music history is the life and work of composers in the Soviet Union. It is close to my family history and always forces me to imagine my life had I been born 60 years earlier.

When I was in Ukraine last fall, my grandfather showed me a fascinating document: a torn up issue of the Ukrainian Pravda, an affiliate of the most important Soviet newspaper, dated from 1944. He had torn up and burned most of it before realizing what he was holding. What makes this issue special is that it is dedicated to the one-year anniversary of the liberation of Kiev from German occupation. It also contains an article by the Soviet composer Konstantyn Dankevych. What he has to say is an incredible glimpse into the kind of political and psychological environment that Soviet composers lived in.

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“…our dearest and wisest father and chief. Now and forever our Soviet land is cleansed of German occupiers. The Red Army is preparing to fulfill a historic mission – to raise the emblem of our victory over Berlin!

“In this bright hour we are all thinking about Stalin. There is no challenge more enlightening and absorbing for an artist than to recreate the image of Stalin as he really is: the image of a person, chief of the nation and the party, military leader, man of learning. Perhaps this would only be possible for a whole collective of writers, composers, artists and scientists. Perhaps this image can only be created by a generation of masters of the arts – a whole generation.

“Most likely that is the case. Because Stalin is an epoch.

“But we live today and today our chest is tearing open in song and gratitude. Today our hearts yearn towards the Kremlin, and today we want to sing what is in our souls.

“I open my eyes and look out the window. A bright, sunny morning has come. I tell myself:

“‘This is Stalin!’

“I walk down the street. I see people. They hurry to work. They rebuild their city. They innovate. They write new books. They learn. They truly live. I tell myself:

“‘This is Stalin!’

“In the heart of this great and simple man…[the newspaper is torn here]…the hands of all peoples of the Soviet Union in great, unbreakable friendship? Who raised our country before the whole world, forcing them to deeply respect and love her? Who lives in everything that is dear to us, in the very thing we breath?

“I recently completed a symphonic choral work, setting the poem “The wreath of glory to the great Stalin,” which was performed on the 6th of November at the triumphant parliamentary session in Kiev. The poem was written for the 27th anniversary of the Great October Revolution and the one-year anniversary of the liberation of Kiev from German attackers. It is dedicated to the great Stalin.

“An immense challenge was before me, an ordinary Soviet composer. Is my poem worthy in the smallest degree of the image of the one, to whom it belongs with its every note? I know only one thing: never before have I written with such passion. And I would have never been able to write it had I not felt on my breast the warm hand, to which I cling like a son, the hand of Stalin.

“The people sing about the greatest triumph of the Russian, Ukrainian and all the people of the brother nations of the Soviet Union! It was Stalin’s friendship of the nations that won today!

“The trumpet-like voice of the victors sings, it rises high above the earth, and in this voice I hear the praise to the man, whose name has given glory to our age and whose image will forever live among the people.”

Flatten your throat and sing

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“Flatten your throat and send a nasty sound into your teeth.”

That’s roughly what we were trying to do in the student folk ensemble led by the well-known Ukrainian ethnomusicologist Yevhen Yefremov.

This week I was very lucky to sit in on a lecture on the modal organization of Ukrainian folksong given by professor Yefremov at the Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music. Professor Yefremov doesn’t just collect and analyze folksongs. He can also sing them complete with all the ornamentation, altered tunings, and the authentic village timbre. His lecture was full of musical examples, which he performed himself, from memory and without any lesson plans. Later in the day I got to participate in his student ensemble where we tried to decipher and imitate several folksongs from Ukrainian villages found on Russian territory. Who knows, maybe we’ll make a folk singer out of me yet.

Last night, Maria and I got our first real taste of live folksong performance, which took place not in a village, but on the 22nd floor of a very futuristic-looking Soviet apartment block in the Troeshchina suburb.* Iryna Danylejko, the lovely ethnomusicologist who is helping us with our expeditions, invited us over to her “penthouse”** apartment to celebrate her daughter’s fourth birthday. The apartment is filled with curious objects that Iryna and her husband Danylo brought back from various expeditions: hanging baskets, ornate icons, a giant wooden trunk and a small stone mill, to name a few.

Once we got through a couple of bottles of wine and a small decanter of rosehip-infused horilka (Ukrainian vodka), the four singers treated us to three folksongs. I spent most of today walking around my uncle’s empty apartment, tears streaming from my eyes from intense sadness and concentration, trying to sing one of the mournful songs through my partially squeezed throat. I should have really been writing the somewhat belated piano quartet for Ensemble Sonore instead. But folksong is my raison d’être in Ukraine, right? Sonore can wait, I hope.

Iryna sings in a folk ensemble Mykhajlove Chudo (Mихайлове Чудо). You can see and hear them here and here, and with the rock band N.Sh.N (Н.Ш.Н.) here.

* Yes, suburbs in Ukraine are made up of 22-story apartment buildings with not one single-family unit in sight.

** As Iryna’s husband, Danylo, called their humble, but cosy abode from which you can see most of Kiev.

Ukraine: first days

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Achievements to date: learning how to use a cell phone with Russian menus and making a whole THREE phone calls to strangers (1 in Russian, 2 in Ukrainian).

My sister and I left Canada last Friday. Two days and several long layovers later, we have finally arrived in Kiev. I was disappointed to discover that the Chopin Airport in Warsaw did NOT have pianos OR Chopin impersonators playing mazurkas at every gate, as I hoped, but there was quite a bit of Chopin-related merchandize in the duty-free shops.

I was born in Ukraine, but I’ve been living in Canada long enough that my visits to the Motherland are always a bit of a culture shock. There is an insane contrast between the restored, shiny and super expensive centre with its luxury cars and fashionable, stilettoed women, and the slummy suburbs made up of endless blocks of Soviet-era concrete apartments*. The transit system also gets increasingly questionable the further you travel from the central areas. The neighbourhood I’m saying in boasts rickety 50-year-old trams featuring razor-sharp ticket validators (two of my fingers were bloody before I felt any pain) and old ladies in babushkas squeezing themselves through the dense crowd to collect transit payment.

To my great joy, I’ve discovered that one can see an opera for $1.20 at the National Opera House. That’s cheaper than a bag of chips in Canada. The most expensive ticket is about $25. The season also features several works by Ukrainian composers, which I read about but could not find back in Canada. I’m pretty thrilled. Next weekend should be a triple hit consisting of one ballet and two operas.

While searching for the opera house, we stumbled upon two street performers who could have made a perfect postcard of Ukrainian stereotypes. They were twin sisters – blonde, modelesque and dressed to the nines – playing banduras and singing Ukrainian folksongs in harmony. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, but there was a creepy older man filming them quite closely on his iPhone so maybe you can find that video on the internet (here’s one with no sound, who needs sound with women like that?).

See my sister’s take on the situation here.

* Granted, there are lots of stilettoed women in the slummy suburbs too, hopping over puddles and weaving stealthy through streets dug up for plumbing repairs some years ago.