MAZURKA IN THE OUTPUT OF UKRAINIAN COMPOSERS: REGARDING THE PROBLEM OF MUSICAL AND CULTURAL INTEGRATION

Abstract

The piano mazurka which at the beginning of the 19th century, transformed from utilitarian music genre (written to be danced to) into a form of musical art, achieved during the realm of Romantic aesthetics a wide-reaching resonance in the output of European composers. This form of piano miniature, combining the traditions of folk, popular and artistic mazurka, was also the object of interest of Ukrainian composers who mainly adopted the characteristic features of the dance from Fryderyk Chopin’s music. The first among them (in the 2nd half of the 19th century) to implement in his works the stylistic measures of Chopin’s mazurkas was Mykola Lysenko (1842–1912). This tradition was continued in the 20th century by Yakiv Stepovy (Yakymenko) (1883–1921), Viktor Kosenko (1895–1937), Valerian Dovzhenko (1905–1995), Mykola Sylvanovsky (1916–1985) and Yurij Szczurovsky (1927–1996), among others. In their mazurkas the structural features of the Polish dance were also combined with the idioms of other musical genres – waltz, prelude, nocturne and other forms of salon music. What is characteristic, these composers remained true to the Romantic tradition. New sound forms of the piano mazurka introduced in the 1st half of the 20th century by Karol Szymanowski failed to register with their music. Moreover, the mazurkas of the Ukrainian composers stand out due to the lack of the modal scales typical for Polish folk music from the region of Mazovia, especially the absence from the melody of the Lydian fourth, i.e. the raised fourth scale degree. The rhythmical structure has become another striking feature of the mazurkas by Ukrainian composers. The Ukrainian composers would often make use of the rhythmical models containing punctuated rhythm, which confirms the fact that they adopted the tradition of stylized mazurka instead of its folk variety. Such structural features of the mazurkas by Ukrainian composers allow one to point out the main sociolects and idiolects from which these composers of mazurkas drew their inspiration. As opposed to Fryderyk Chopin, the Ukrainian composers did not use Polish folk music as their musical sociolect (or a peculiar cultural ‘dialect’, characterized by a unique atmosphere, climate, endowed with a particular set of characters and types of expression). Surely, we will not find in these pieces the raw modal material, certain rhythms characteristic of folk music from Poland’s central regions, nor will we notice any specific subgenres of the mazurka dances. The musical sociolect in this case is the salon music, the cultural patterns of which took firm root in the sound imagination of more than one of the above mentioned composers. The musical idiolect (understood as “specific manner of artistic expression, made concrete via authorship”) which left an undeniable mark on the character of the mazurkas by Ukrainian composers, on the other hand, was the music of Fryderyk Chopin. It was not always – as in the case of Lysenko – a direct imitation. The universality of Chopin’s oeuvre allowed others to perceive in it the prototype of the artistic form embodying the categorical features of the dance. Additionally, Chopin’s mazurkas suggested the techniques of stylization of the raw folk material, i.e. the form of its conversion to and alignment with the techniques of creating musical art. Such perspective of interpreting the relations between the above mentioned pieces and Polish culture is also supported by stylistic and expressive idioms. The reflexive tone of some of the Ukrainian mazurkas suggests that the common element aligning the two musical traditions, Polish (Chopinian) and Ukrainian, could be the romance idiom with the help of which the composers attempted to capture the idiomatic structure of the mazurka-type dances, especially the kujawiak. According to Mieczysław Tomaszewski, the romance idiom, “occurring between dolce andespressivo”, sublimates the tradition of the song romance of French provenience and the emotional character of the Ukrainian duma. Chopin’s oeuvre, by integrating various cultural traditions, radiates – as we know – across these cultures, suggesting the values and means of artistic expression to individual composers. Therefore, his unique ability to awake artistic imagination may be seen as specific musical tradition the successors of which were the Ukrainian composers of the piano mazurkas of the 19th and 20th centuries.