Echo of fidelity and love

March 4 is the birthday of Volodymyr Ivasiuk, one of the most talented figures in 20th-century Ukrainian music.

His peers — Mykola Mozhovy, Ihor Poklad, Oleksandr Zlotnyk, Hennadii Tatarchenko, and others — continue to work successfully in the genre of Ukrainian lyrical songs. But fate decreed that Ivasiuk would depart this life very early. The heinous and mysterious murder of the composer made the world shudder. On the day of Ivasiuk’s funeral tens of thousands of people flooded the streets of Lviv to protest this crime: they refused to believe that the handsome young man was no longer with them. They could not even pay their last respects because Ivasiuk had been maimed beyond recognition.

But nobody could say this out loud in May 1979. One who dared was the poet Rostyslav Bratun, Ivasiuk’s friend and the co-author of his songs. Standing at the composer’s grave, Bratun declared that this was the funeral not of a student but of an outstanding artist who had been murdered. These words cost Bratun his job at the Lviv Oblast branch of the Union of Writers, and the ban on publishing his works lasted for five years.

At Ivasiuk’s gravesite his parents would often find poems dedicated to their son. They were written by those who did not believe in suicide, the version concocted by the authorities. In 1982 Mykhailo Ivasiuk received a letter from the human rights activist Yosyp Terelia, who wrote it in response to the novel The Ballad of the Rider on a White Horse. Terelia wrote a “Requiem” at the end of his letter, in which he compared the sufferings of the composer to those of Christ. It was not until 1989 that the poetic “Ivasiukiana” — the treasury of fascinating, multifaceted, original works by famous names and talents, including those by Ihor Kalynets, Stepan Pushyk, Valerii Herasymov, and many others - became accessible to the public.

THE IVASIUK ERA

More than a dozen songs were dedicated to Ivasiuk on the crest of a nationwide movement for the revival of Ukrainian culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Contributing to this noble cause were the all-Ukrainian and regional Chervona Ruta competitions, the Traveling Musician competition for young composers, and other events that, one way or another, were linked with Ivasiuk’s name. These songs mostly express admiration for the composer’s oeuvre and grief over his tragic and untimely death. The songs are full of weepy pathos, and this particularly applies to those authors who were born and raised in the post-Ivasiuk era and have only a faint idea of the composer’s prominence and his role in the life of Ukraine and Ukrainians in the 1970s. But this came much later. The pain over the loss of Ivasiuk was so great that even the mountains, which he so loved and sang their praises, seemed to weep. It was impossible to keep silent, and impossible to speak out frankly. Again, for the umpteenth time in the Soviet era, one had to resort to Aesopian language, this time not about the state system or other political problems but about remembering and honoring the name of the one who fell in the battle against stupidity and envy.

On May 22, 1979, Ivasiuk’s birthday, the poet Yurii Rybchynsky saw his friend and co-author off to Lychakiv Cemetery. He had written only three songs with Ivasiuk: “Klenovyi vohon” (Maple Fire), “Moi Kiev” (My Kyiv), and “U doli svoia vesna” (Fate Has Its Spring). Rybchynsky worked a lot with other young composers, especially with Ihor Poklad whose songs “Oi letily dyki husy” (Wild Geese Were Flying) and “Sila ptakha syzokryla na topoliu” (A Gray-Winged Bird Perched on a Poplar) sung by Nina Matviienko were immensely popular. Rybchynsky gave his poem “Mynaie den, mynaie nich” (A Day Passes, a Night Passes) to the composer Mykola Mozhovy, a fellow countryman of Ivasiuk’s, who set it to music. This song has been part of Sofia Rotaru’s repertoire ever since. In her rendition, it is a monologue of the Muse who will no longer be able to inspire the Composer because he is gone forever, and the saddest thing is that it is impossible to stop loving him. The music is full of elegiac sadness rising to a tragic pitch in the refrain: “The trouble is not that the cutting wind is howling and January is painting dead flowers on the window.”

The image of Brezhnev-era stagnation is conveyed precisely and tersely, and time cannot be stopped, but there is still a glimmer of hope, although “the trouble is that I can’t stop loving you.” This is the way the song was “decoded” in 1979, but as the years went by, the song continued to live on as a true piece of art. The deeply tragic feelings embedded in the melody and the lyrics prevent the song from becoming a run of the mill poem about love and separation. Instead, they raise it above the fussy dullness and drabness that Ivasiuk always opposed in his creativity.

In 1994 Rybchynsky told the guests at a memorial soiree at the Chernivtsi Oblast Theater that when Poklad and he were touring the Soviet Far North in the 1970s, they received a request from the audience to perform “Chervona Ruta.” Rybchynsky said that it was Ivasiuk’s song and not part of Poklad’s and his repertoire. But the anonymous person sent them another note with the identical request. The result was that the poet and the composer were not allowed to leave the stage unless they sang Ivasiuk’s “Chervona Ruta.”

In 1979 very few people believed that Ivasiuk had committed suicide. As Poklad used to say, Ivasiuk “was brutally tortured to death.” He hit upon the idea to compose a song to honor the memory of his comrade, colleague, and friend. First, the music was born and then Rybchynsky created a poem. “The words went outside the music, especially in the refrain,” Poklad recalls. The song “Skrypka hraie, sertse kraie” (The Violin Is Playing, and the Heart Is Wailing) was then beautifully sung by Vasyl Zinkevych. The song’s music is deeply rooted in the folklore of eastern Ukraine. It is full of regret and sadness over what can never be brought back.

Everybody knew and loved Ivasiuk’s songs, so an attentive listener would immediately recognize the “yellow leaf” of the song that they knew by this very name — it was first sung by Rotaru in the film Chervona Ruta. The “captivity of cloudy days” was very easily interpreted against the backdrop of the well-known “captivity of grief” from the song “Chervona Ruta” and the “captivity of songs” from the song “U doli svoia vesna.” In the song “Skrypka hraie, sertse kraie” the songwriters express the anguish of leave-taking and the indescribable pain of eternal separation. The singer will never visit you even in your dreams: his star is waning, the star of talent and life.

Another work from 1979 is Arnold Sviatohorov’s song “Vidlunnia virnosti” (The Echo of Fidelity) set to lyrics by Vitalii Blyzniuk. The composer claims he read the poem in a regional newspaper.

Unfortunately, he does not remember the newspaper: the point is that it was quite an exploit to print such a poem at a time when only the newspaper Literaturna Ukraina dared express condolences to the dead composer’s parents and brother. It may be assumed that the poem was printed without a dedication. The text is nonetheless transparent.

“The spell-binding red rue fell like a star into my heart. I thought it was forever, for my entire life.”

This song was premiered in the musical film Monologue of Love starring Sofia Rotaru and directed by Larysa Masliuk. This was the only Ukrainian song in the film. Rotaru sang it while holding a candle in her hand. The film shows Ivasiuk as the embodiment of one life-long love. That is the way it is because the composer’s songs are still with us.

SOURCE OF LOVE AND SORROW

The fact that Ivasiuk’s songs are immortal was clear even when he was creating them in the throes of inspiration, when he was rushing to do as much as possible, working without a letup, “like a power plant,” as he told his father one time, often sleeping for just two or three hours. His eyes were often bloodshot, but not from alcohol, which would be so pleasant for the Philistine for whom creativity always had less value than the artist’s lifestyle, his clothing, and daily life. It is no secret that Ivasiuk was the subject of gossip. He had to face obstacles even in his early life: he was once comically placed under Lenin’s bust, his song lyrics were ascribed to his father, and he was bullied at the medical institute and then at the conservatory. These are proven facts recorded in documents and memoirs. He was defenseless against this.

In 1979 everybody was perfectly aware of the person that the Ukrainian song lost with his death. It lost its future for many years to come. In their songs Mozhovy, Poklad, and Sviatohorov expressed the feeling of a great loss to the song culture. They created the image of a musical genius whose talent will not be effaced even by the “river of time” and whom one cannot stop loving. Their works, like Ivasiuk’s songs, are a genuine contribution to Ukraine’s treasury of songs. These are not epitaphs on a tombstone; this is an ever-lasting source of love and sadness.

The first all-Ukrainian Chervona Ruta festival heard the song “Remember!” by the Lishchynas, a father and son from Canada (Leonid composed the lyrics and Volodymyr, the melody). Their song was about the great impact that Ivasiuk’s songs had on Ukrainians living far way from their homeland. His songs revived their souls and offered hope for a better future. The song is deeply lyrical and includes many allusions to Ivasiuk’s songs. It was not necessary to announce at the concert called “To the Fire and Water of the Fatherland” that it was a dedication to Ivasiuk: the audience members understood it from the very first chords, stood up, and lit candles.

In 1994, a Ivasiuk memorial concert, held at the Chernivtsi Oblast Music and Drama Theater to mark the composer’s 45th birth anniversary and the awarding of the Shevchenko Prize, heard the first performance of Hennadii Tatarchenko’s Requiem set to the poems of Yurii Rybchynsky. It was performed by Nazarii Yaremchuk: “All pianos are dead without you, all violins are silent without you.” The music of this solemn composition harbors the hope that heaven will receive the singer like an angel.

There are also instrumental compositions dedicated to Ivasiuk, such as the improvisation on the “Chervona Ruta” theme by the Canadian composer Borys Bazal and one called “A Traveling Musician” by the violinist and composer Yurii Hina, one of Ivasiuk’s teachers.

The participants of the young composers’ competition Travelling Musician, which has been held since 1997 by the Chernivtsi-based Ivasiuk Memorial Museum, are testing their strength in an effort to recreate the late composer’s image.

The theme of “Volodymyr Ivasiuk in Music” needs a thorough analysis and wider popularization, because the works that have been dedicated to Volodymyr Ivasiuk were created by talented people and are now gems of Ukrainian music.