Maestro who presented us with the Garden of Divine Songs

Ivan Karabyts is a well-known Ukrainian composer. He is a pupil of Borys Liatoshynsky, and a Sixtier. Maestro’s creative activity was versatile: during his short life (a mere 57 years) Karabyts proved to be an original composer, talented conductor, wonderful pedagogue, and producer. He did a lot to make our country known in the world (Ivan Karabyts is the only Ukrainian composer who won the audience’s applause at the concert in the legendary Carnegie Hall). His symphony Five Songs about Ukraine, oratorio opera Kyiv Frescoes, choir concert The Garden of Divine Songs, a concert for the orchestra Lamentation etc. have already been included in the golden fund of contemporary music. Karabyts founded the Kyivska Kamerata ensemble, revived the Summer Music Soirees at Kyiv’s Mariinksky Park, he headed the jury of the Horowitz International Competition of Young Pianists, and established the legendary festival “Kyiv-Music-Fest.” He was a compassionate, wise, educated man of high principles, and also a faithful friend, caring husband and father. One of his last compositions, Vio-Serenade, is a hymn to beauty and love. Karabyts’s music is performed not only in Ukraine, but also in the US, France, Holland, Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland, Finland, etc. The author says in the preface to Lamentation: “Between the living ones and those who passed away there is memory, without which there can be no future.”

“THE PROFESSION OF A COMPOSER REQUIRES A SPECIAL CONVERSATION WITH ONESELF”

“On Epiphany, several days before Ivan Fedorovych deceased, a priest entered his hospital ward. He looked at my husband with sadness,” Marianna KOPYTSIA, the composer’s widow, a well-known music expert, NMAU professor, recalled. “Ivan understood as well that his days are drawing to a close, but did not give up. ‘I love the Christmas and Epiphany holidays. It is so good to live!’ He hurried to live. Maybe he felt intuitively that little time on the Earth had been allotted to him. Ivan was afraid to tell his mother that he was gravely ill, because he understood that she would worry. He tried to speak cheerfully when he phoned her on his birthday, after which he hung up and said: ‘My poor mother, all of her four children are dead.’ He passed away on January 20.

“The winter holidays are very symbolical for our family. My son Kyrylo [currently a well-known conductor. – Author] opened on December 26 the list of those who have birthdays in winter, then there was my daughter Ivanna [a TV journalist. – Author] – on January 5, and on January 17 my children and I congratulated Ivan Fedorovych. It is hard for me to believe that he is not with us for 10 years by now. You know, I am sure that if his music is supposed to be well-known and needed by people, it will find its audience. My primary task is to publish collections of his works, namely the piano music. The Artemivsk Music School is named after Ivan Karabyts and the Ivan Karabyts Competition will be held for the sixth time this year. Several years ago I was invited to a corporation. It turned out that Oleksandr Karpov served in the army with Ivan. He is a painter, architect, sculptor, and patronizes young talents. Under the aegis of the Ministry of Education and Science he has been holding the young artists’ competitions for 15 years. Oleksandr Mykhailovych asked to help him hold a Karabyts Competition of Young Composers. This year it will take place for the second time, essentially broadening the geographic scope of its participants (not only from different oblasts of Ukraine, but also from the US and Poland).

“It is very gratifying that the NMAU, Ivan’s and my alma mater, has been holding for seven years in succession the concerts ‘Karabyts and his pupils’ and in ‘Among Karabyts’s Friends.’ Valerii Matiukhin, artistic director of the Kyivska Kamerata ensemble has prepared a special program to Karabyts’s 10th death anniversary which is scheduled for February 7. Ivan Federovych’s pupils are nearby; I help them because they are very modest people. The profession of a composer does not include many people, it is secluded and requires a special conversation with oneself; these are people kissed by God. It seems to me that a singer and composer are two professions you cannot learn unless you have talent.”

“WHERE IS YOUR COUNTRY, IN AFRICA?”

“In 2010 cellist Oleksandr Piriiev and pianist Artem Liakhovych initiated the Ukrainian-Russian festival ‘Vivere Memento.’ Concerts, lectures, and roundtables took place at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Moscow and Glinka Museum. Pianists from the two countries performed Karabyts’s piano music, and a gala concert took place in Kyiv. The festival was named after Karabyts’s vocal-symphonic poem written to Franko’s verse, and completely justified its name, Remembering about Life. Incidentally, the cycle ‘Music-Review Ukraine,’ which is being held at the Foundation for Developing Culture and Arts, opened with Ivan Fedorovych’s music.

“This year the Paris-based Ukrainian Cultural Center is planning to hold a series of Ukrainian music concerts and to begin with Karabyts’s oeuvre, they also want the works of Myroslav Skoryk, Ihor Shcherbakov, Valentyn Sylvestrov. France has a large Ukrainian diaspora, which has supported our country since the first years of independence. I remember that Monsieur Lionel Stoleru as France’s Minister of Economy, and later an advisor of President Leonid Kravchuk, was assisting in launching foreign banks in Ukraine in the mid-1990s and also helped Karabyts as a producer to organize a big tour of the Dumka choir. Ivan Fedorovych organized the US tour for Dumka. Incidentally, until now Karabyts is the only contemporary Ukrainian composer who won standing ovation of the American audience at the Carnegie-Hall. It was in 1997. Ivan received an order to write a work to the verse of dissident Mykola Rudenko to mark the 100th anniversary of settlement of Ukrainian emigrants in America (1994). The Festive Cantata was performed by a combined choir Dumka, including the emigres and those who worked in the 1990s in the choir in Kyiv. The event gathered singers from various countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the US and others, i.e., the descendants of those who emigrated from our countries in 1918 together with Oleksandr Koshetz to promote the choir art of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and those who did not accept the Soviet power and stayed abroad. That was a grandiose concert!

“Ivan Fedorovych was among the first to set cultural bridges with America. Incidentally, after that tour American and French composers came to the Kyiv-Music-Fest. Karabyts came up with an idea to establish this festival in 1990 with an aim to promote Ukrainian culture. I remember Ivan Fedorovych telling after a trip to Argentina that he was surprised, when a restaurant waiter, when he heard Ukrainian language, asked: ‘Where is your country, in Africa?’ Since that moment Ivan decided to do his utmost to make Ukraine known in the world. For we have such a huge country, we are in the center of Europe. Everyone should do something from their positions for the image of Ukraine. Incidentally, when students went on a hungry strike on Maidan, they came to the conservatoire hall, shook Karabyts’s hand and said that his music was spiritual food. At that time a famous Ukraine-born French composer Marian Kuzan came to Kyiv with his wife (she is Debussy’s relative), because his nephew went on a hungry strike, too. You know, speaking about Kyiv-Music-Fest, it is an interesting story not only from music culture, but also the history of our country’s asserting itself as an independent state.”

“NAMELY SERHII KRYMSKY BLEW UP OUR CONCEPT OF BAROQUE CULTURE”

“Ivan had two friends: composer Valentyn Sylvestrov and academician Serhii Krymsky, who was not a musician. They both liked to come to our place since the time they were students. Krymsky’s wife is a music expert too, she was my teacher, but we did not feel any age difference. Incidentally, Krymsky gave my husband a hint to write music to The Garden of Divine Songs to Hryhorii Skovoroda’s verse for choir, soloists, and symphony orchestra. Namely Krymsky blew up our concept of the baroque culture and grandiose figure of Skovoroda. Today we already know much about Skovoroda the philosopher, and in the late 1960s-early 1970s Krymsky’s works were a revelation. When Ivan wrote his Garden… he was quoting Skovoroda all the time. It was his favorite work and today it is the first neo-baroque composition in Ukrainian music, which built a bridge between Bortniansky, Berezovsky and present day. It will be recalled that spiritual music was banned in the Soviet time, whereas our national mentality is based namely on the choir music. Every country is associated with a certain music genre. For example, Italy is opera, Vienna classicism (Austria and Germany) is instrumental and symphonic music, and Ukraine is choir music. Namely with its help we conquer the world and bring our music gifts to the cultural treasury.”

“IVAN DID NOT HAVE A FRIEND CLOSER THAN SYLVESTROV”

Ivan Fedorovych made himself. He came from province and became an outstanding man. He became part of the Kyiv intelligentsia family. He got acquainted with Marianna Kopytsia back in student years. She was a beautiful girl and had many admirers. Karabyts came to the house where the Ukrainian elite gathered. Marianna’s father, Davyd Demydovych Kopytsia, a writer, editor of the Fatherland magazine, headed the Kyiv Dovzhenko Film Studio (he died in 1965).

“Ivan’s aura attracted people,” Marianna Kopytsia underlined, “He was a modest and well-read boy with a look full of light and immense talent. When he came to our place for the first time, my mother said: ‘What a nice boy. Stay friends with him.’ Though we were students, she did not talk us out of the early marriage. You know, those who communicated with Karabyts immediately got enchanted by him. He was a person of high inner culture, philosophical mind, he was intelligent, attentive, modest, kind, very compassionate, always ready to help.

“Ivan did not have a friend closer than Sylvestrov. Valentyn’s place gathered music youth fond of avant-garde as well as poets and painters. Sylvestrov was the best man at our wedding. We celebrated the wedding at home. Valia and Ivan were sitting in the corner, carried away by conversation. Sylvestrov’s wife Larysa, looking at them, told me: ‘You chose a difficult lot, to be a wife of a composer. You should understand that he is a special man, create for Ivan all conditions for creative work. Bow your head and follow him.’

“Ivan composed music by some inner ear. He treated his every creation very tenderly, he did not speak much about what was only in the process of creation (he was afraid to scare away the melody and lose confidence about something). When Ivan and I got married, my father was not among the living. You know, there must be some regularity: my father died at the age of 59, and 57 was a fatal date for Ivan. Whereas the early death of my father can be explained: he went through a war, he was wounded 19 times, but my husband was a healthy man. Ivan Fedorovych died because of misdiagnosis (he had pneumonia on a US concert with the Horowitz Contest winners, but did not have bed rest). When my husband came back to Kyiv, he coughed for long. The doctors decided he had a tumor: they prescribed intensive chemotherapy and irradiation. They offered to conduct a surgery. Our son Kyrylo brought father to Austria for consultation, but it turned out there that there was no tumor, only burnt lungs. My husband had a fever, but he continued to work, he hold the competition “Horowitz debut” as a chairman of the jury, lectured, and composed music. My children and I thought that he had overstrained himself and would recover soon. Till his last minute my husband was conscious, we were making plans for our future. But he died because his kidneys failed.

“On Ivan’s death anniversary we came to the cemetery with Sylvestrov, and I told Valentyn that Ivan did not have time to write music to Skovoroda’s Latin text. The music scores where he noted his ideas were in his briefcase, which accompanied him even in hospitals. Sylvestrov asked me to give him the notes. He called me in a month and said, “I picked up a couple of themes. That was how Elegy emerged, which Sylvestrov finished and dedicated to his friend.”

Today Karabyts’s son Kyrylo is doing his utmost to promote Ivan Fedorovych’s music. In mid-December a grand concert took place in England with the participation of the Symphony Orchestra and with the assistance of BBC. It featured the works of Stravinsky, Liszt, and Karabyts, and Kyrylo was at the conductor’s stand. The program enjoyed positive criticism, with the critics marking a special mention of the Second concert for piano with orchestra by Karabyts. This is a very bright work, adapted for stage. In the middle of it the musicians start to clasp their hands, and the audience joins the ovation. The concert was broadcast in the Internet. A BBC host told about Ivan Fedorovych’s creative work, specifically, the history of the concert (it is connected with the Chornobyl Accident), as well as about Kyrylo as a conductor. Karabyts wrote the Second concert for piano in 1986. In spite of the sad events that took place in that year (the disaster on the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant), this work is life-asserting. And in his Third concert (Lamentation) Ivan Fedorovych succeeded in conveying the pain brought by the anthropogenic catastrophe in Chornobyl. This work is a kind of repentance before our descendants.