Virko Baley: a music bridge between the World and Ukraine

Abstract

Relevance of the study. Virko Baley is an American composer, conductor and pianist of Ukrainian origin. He has played an important role in forming cultural layout of Ukraine since 1970s. His achievements in supporting Ukrainian music and promoting it around the world are well known and praised in Ukraine. However, his own music, being a specific bridge between Ukrainian and Western cultures, became the subject of musicological study quite seldom and should be studied systematically and in full capacity.The mail objective of the study is to consider V. Baley’s music and various kinds of his organizing efforts in supporting Ukrainian culture as an activity built on common ground including Ukrainian historical and art elements as the key factors.The methodology of the study involves a combination of biographical approach and theoretical analysis of music idiom typical of Baley’s music.Baley started his musical career as a concert pianist in 1960s. His programs consisted of typical classical and romantic repertoire, as well as works by radical 20th century authors (Schoenberg, Webern, Messiaen, Boulez, Stockhausen). A bit later he found out several piano solo and chamber scores of young Ukrainian innovative composers, such as V. Silvestrov, L. Hrabovsky, V. Godzyatsky, M. Skoryk, I. Karabyts, and B. Liatoshynsky. Their pieces became an important part of Baley’s piano recitals and, thereafter his orchestral concerts. In his own music Baley elaborated rather unique combination of various 20th century styles and techniques (extended tonality, atonality, rhythmic complexity, new type of polyphony, extended instrumental techniques, neoromantic melody, a. o.) and Ukrainian idiom (fragments of folk tunes, traditional cultural symbols and images of cultural personalities). One of the most important innovative features of his music is polyphony of narratives that includes simultaneous textural lines joined into common sound realm.The conclusion of the study. Technically and esthetically Virko Baley’s music reflects important trends and ideas of the 20th century modernism and avant - garde. At the same time, due to “Ukrainian element” as an integral part of its discourse, as well as an original combination of different techniques, this music provides an individual approach which enriched both Ukrainian and American music and may be further developed.