Ukrainian national vocal tradition: genre, style and performance projections

Abstract

Statement of the problem. The research of a national component in music is one of the urgent areas of music science, which can be realized in various aspects – historical, socio-cultural, stylistic, genre, compositional, and performance. The need of studying national specifics is traced most clearly on the examples of European countries, where the path of academic musical art has large time parameters. The Ukrainian national tradition, the vocal in particular, belongs to such musical phenomena. The analysis of publications on the chosen topic shows that, in addition to academic musicological works (Draganchuk, 2008; Komenda, 2014; Lyudkevych, 1999a, 1999b; Liashenko, 1973, 1991; Romaniuk, 2009), there are studies on the border of different sciences – musicology, sociology, history, psychology, cultural studies (Nikolaievska, 2020; Applegate, 1998; Gottlieb, 2019; Kelly, Mantere, & Scott, 2018; Knox, 2019). The studies of national traditions in musical art, as a rule, concern the general principles of their manifestation (Draganchuk, Lyudkevych, Liashenko, Applegate, Kelly, Mantere, & Scott), as well as the creative work of individual composers (Komenda, Romaniuk). The study of national traditions in the performing aspect today requires special development. All this determines the scientific novelty of the presented research, which is related to the systematic characteristics of the whole phenomenon of the Ukrainian national vocal tradition. Our purpose is to identify the genre, style and performing aspects of it. The complex of research methods includes several directions: studying the researches devoted to the national in music in general, in the work of Ukrainian composers in particular; of the scientific works on a wide range of modern issues of musical theory and practice, as well as the analysis of historical evolution of Ukrainian vocal music. Research results and conclusions. In vocal music, national specificity operates on several levels – stylistic, genre, compositional, figurative, semantic, and performing. The Ukrainian national vocal tradition combines all these levels, which interact in different ways in a specific piece of music. It is important to note the difference between the concepts of national vocal tradition and national vocal school – the latter is a component of the national vocal tradition, which combines traditional musical culture and academic musical art, represented by both musical compositions and their presentation, that is by musical practice.