PECULIARITIES OF THE INTERPRETATION OF POETIC TEXT IN ‘SEVEN STRINGS’ VOCAL CYCLE BY IVAN VOVK ON THE WORDS OF L UKRAINKA

Abstract

Life path of Ivan Vovk, a Ukrainian composer, a representative of Ukrainian artistic emigration, who was in France during the World War II and later lived in the USA and Brazil, is reconstructed in the article. There is no much information about him, it is scattered among various sources, including personal documents of individual representatives of musical emigration. In particular, information from the epistolary of M. Antonowycz, a Ukrainian musicologist and conductor, which reveals more about the figure of the composer Vovk and individual events from his life, is used in the article. Among the composer’s works, our attention was drawn by a vocal cycle ‘Seven strings’ on the words of L. Ukrainka. Many Ukrainian composers turned to certain poems of the cycle, though the entire cycle has been embodied in the music of individual composers. Those are, in particular, Viktor Herasymchuk, Oleksandr Kozarenko, composers of the Ukrainian diaspora Myron Fedoriv, from the USA, and Stepan Spiekh, from Germany. The works have been written for various performers – for voice and piano, female A Capella choir, children’s choir accompanied by the piano, melodic recitals, etc., and interspecific dialogue in the works is embodies in different ways. ‘Seven strings’ vocal cycle by Ivan Vovk for voice and piano notes the composer’s individual interpretation of poems and their musical subtitles. It is asserted that understanding the senses of subtitles and musical terms was important for the composer to penetrate deeper into the figurative essence of poetry and its reproduction in musical images. Despite the tangible romantic component, the main semantic ‘framework’ of the vocal cycle is made up of the parts Hymn – Sonnet – Settina, classical European genres, in which the composer emphasizes the allusion to antiquity, where the topic of serving the Motherland and high universal ideals were the main constants of public consciousness. The composer creates an integral dramaturgical line of the cycle using L. Ukrainka’s poetry verses, in which the key words – images are connected with bright, inspiring and life-affirming emotions.