CREATIVE ACTIVITY OF PROMINENT UKRAINIAN SINGERS IN THE LIGHT OF ART CRITICISM THOUGHT BY STANISLAV LYUDKEVYCH

Abstract

The article is dedicated to exploring the numerous contributions of Stanislav Lyudkevych in the fields of musicology and music criticism, with a focus on Ukrainian singers and their performing activities. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the scholar’s thoughts regarding his evaluations of the creative activity of singers and their vocal capabilities. To achieve this, a range of sources, scientific publications in the form of articles and reviews, have been analyzed, providing insight into the scholar’s approaches as an art critic and musicologist towards various artistic events, which included not only singers of European and global stature, such as Oleksandr Myshuha, Solomiya Krushelnytska, Modest Menzinsky, and Mykhailo Holynskyi, but also lesser-known figures who actively contributed to the cultivation and development of culture in the Galician region.A number of general scientific (historical, personal), empirical (observational and descriptive), and specialized art criticism (analytical, interpretive) research methods have been employed to explore the topic. The analyzed materials provide an opportunity to trace the musical and cultural life of Galicia and Lviv over an extended period, to become acquainted with the names of performers, their repertoire, and the level of their performances, as well as to gain objective information about the peculiarities of our singers’ artistic creativity, their vocal characteristics, singing style, performing and artistic abilities, broad intellect, and high spiritual qualities, which prevented them from forgetting their native soil. The study highlights their continuous self-improvement as a driving force for comprehensive development. An analysis of the contents of these works leads to an understanding of the essence of how, by presenting their achievements as evidence of fruitful interaction between various vocal cultures, our famous singers powerfully demonstrated: exceptional talent and a unique voice, as well as a great thirst for discovering the heights of stage performance mastery, can create the image of a singer as a creative personality who, despite difficult circumstances, shapes both herself and the world around her, ultimately mastering the freedom of creativity and becoming both the source and the result of this creativity.