Lev KOLODUB: "The worst thing for culture is ignoramuses in power"

Q: As a composer and head of Kyiv Organization of the Ukrainian Union of Composers, you must have often brushed elbows with the powers that be.

A: Composers have always had to deal with the state. Under the totalitarian regime a well chosen title would often serve as the best cover. But music has always been its eternal self, no matter what you call it. Remember Levko Revutsky's song "Out from Above High Mountain Peaks." Excellent music, kept in the best Soviet official pomp style but firmly rooted in the best Ukrainian creative tradition. Or take Khachaturian's Poem for Stalin. Leave out the propaganda lyrics and you'll have a solid symphony. Brilliant! At times composers would openly ridicule the officially imposed subject, like Prokofiev's Cantata on the Twentieth Anniversary of October. I heard it in Moscow recently and almost everyone in the audience was laughing! I mean music is a remarkable thing, for it can tell much more than is contained in lyrics or title. Music reaches a much higher level of generalization. So much for the creative sphere. As a public figure I have dealt with the authorities since the 1960s. I recall that everything depends on the specific person - his education, tact, and intellect. The worst thing I have had to deal with is the dilettantism of a nonprofessionals trying to impose their taste on professionals. I remember the time when a bureaucrat placed in charge of radio programs barred all piano forte music from the air. Perhaps because he hated it. That was in the 1960s, yet I haven't heard piano forte music since, not that I can remember. No one remembers how this started, but believe me, it all began with that Soviet functionary! Uneducated people in power is the worst problem for culture.

Q: That was then, and what about now?

A: If the situation has changed, it's worse. Under the Soviets bureaucrats in power were afraid of being tagged dunces after all. Now we have real ignoramuses. Today those in charge at all levels know nothing about culture and simply hate it, just because they have never had anything cultural inculcated in them since their childhood.

Not so long ago I was invited to appear in a musical talk show on Promin, a television channel which has denied itself anything even remotely connected with intellectual endeavors. It was broadcast live and I and the program host started a dialogue which quickly turned into a heated debate. I insisted that every individual had to know enough about the art of music and that special TV programs had to be dedicated to the subject, because everyone was now sick and tired of pop/mass art. I was supported by viewers (at lest six calls answered) who were eager to have good music and loathed the amateurish stuff on their home screens, and damn the mass culture clichОs! Regrettably, we still have very little good music on the air and changing this situation will require a great deal of work by many professionals.

Q: You mean that problems relating to the development of the arts should be resolved primarily at the government level?

A: We first of all need a program of national cultural development. We have no traditions of cultural patronage the way they are established in the rest of the civilized world, nor do we have any effective sponsorship laws. As head of the Ukrainian Composes' Union's  Kyiv Organization, I have contacted 26 Kyiv banks, asking for help in organizing a festival of modern music. 25 were silent, and the twenty-sixth said sorry, no money available.

Q: How long do you think this program would take being implemented, if ever?

A: There is a special commission working on it in the Ukrainian Academy of Arts. For us this is the cornerstone. Here the important thing is to give an aesthetic education not only to our children, but also to their teachers. One historical example I find personally fascinating: Simon Petliura's subsidizing a world concert tour of the Koshyts Choir. In the heat of civil war Petliura found the money to set up the choir, so it could use folk songs, the best we have in our creative heritage, to make Ukraine known to the rest of the world. Then take Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky who, in his seven and a half months of office, succeeded in opening the Academy of Sciences, Academy of Art, Military Academy, Ukrainian Art Museum - 21 cultural institutions in all! He understood the importance of culture for Ukraine.

Q: An interesting historical fact indeed. Getting back to the Ukrainian cultural development program, and the problem of Ukrainian youth, would you say that our youth, being infatuated with mass culture, hit parades, etc., are not likely to learn to understand and enjoy serious music?

A: Speaking of concepts, I should point out that there has never been such a notion as youth culture. Culture is culture, that's all there is to it, and what we know as "youth culture" these days is something I would refer to as anti-culture, propagandizing individualism, violence, and totally corrupt taste. Besides, we have to remember that our young people are very different. I know many who take a keen interest in symphonic and operatic music. These are very well educated young men and women. And I could give you an example of an excellent humanitarian education from my family history. Andriy Kolodub, my grandfather, graduated from Pryluky High School (Gymnasium was the name at the time). Before classes started every weekday, the students would to sing in a choir, lasting for an hour. They would start with "The Lord's Prayer," followed by "God Save Our Tsar" (the Russian national anthem - Ed.), ending with Bach's and Bortniansky's choral pieces. Every student sang, of course, and there was the regular choral arrangement, with juniors singing soprano and senior graders doing the bass parts. That was the underlying principle of training at an ordinary provincial high school. After graduation my grandfather was drafted into the Russian army. There he and other soldiers dramatized Natalka-Poltavka and he did the stage design. Later her worked as a mine shift foreman and organized an amateur dramatic group. He did so because he had a classical high school education. I think that we will be able to regard Ukraine as a civilized country after we get the level of that late nineteenth century Pryluky High School.