"SHEVCHENKO EVENINGS" AS THE FIRST ATTEMPT OF MUSICAL INTERPRE-TATION OF SHEVCHENKO’S WORK IN GALICIA

Abstract

Honoring the memory of T. Shevchenko in Galicia in the second half of the nineteenth century considered as one of the most important factors in the design of a national identity. In this context Shevchenko literary and musical evenings, which felt the influence of the Biedermeier aesthetics and which combines the educational function and the "burgher" representativeness are studied. It is noted that the performance on musical-literary evenings the works of Ukrainian composers induced their common emotional experience and influenced the design of the collective Ukrainian identity in the communities of educated Galician Ukrainians. It also contributed to the formation of a common national musical canon and the enrichment of the musical repertoire. It also contributed to the formation of a common national musical canon and the enrichment of the musical repertoire. The article explores the features of the musical transformation of poetry texts by T. Shevchenko by composers M. Verbytsky and S. Vorоbkevych. The emphasis is on the tangible difference between the musical interpretation of Shevchenko’s poetry, which is connected not only with the individual peculiarities of the authors, but also with different traditions that prevail in different regions of Ukraine. It is noted that M. Verbytsky, who in 1868 created his version of the "Testament", was one of the first composers in Galicia who used the poetry of Shevchenko. The general emotional tone of Shevchenko’s "Testament" and its form, which Verbytsky felt, caused the great popularity of this work in Galicia, and the elements of the pathetic-theatrical style that he "invented" can be heard in the musical interpretations of Shevchenko’s poetry made by subsequent generations of Galician composers. It is alleged that simultaneously with Verbytsky and Lysenko at the end of the 1860s S. Vorob-kevych, who wrote a fairly large number of choirs on Shevchenko’s poems, is also appealing to Shevchenko’s creativity. Some of them, in particular, "Overgrown Thorns" and "Oh, why did you darken the green field", since 1870, were often performed at jubilee concerts in Lviv. However, the national nature of the Shevchenko poetic word did not become the creative impulse that would have encouraged Vorobkevych to search for a new nationally-meaningful musical mate-rial, because although his creative activity was in the last third of the nineteenth century, he still remained "old-hagitic" amateur composer with a tendency toward sentimentality and unde-velopedness of their national musical feelings.