When the bitter news of Mykola Kolessa’s death came, the residents of Lviv not only plunged into the throes of agonizing grief, but also fell into a sort of childish confusion. Something of the kind happens in families, whenever the eldest dies and someone else must assume his duties and responsibilities. The most painful thing is that this person carries away certain traditions, habits and a part of the soul that embraces and brings everyone together, as if protecting the family.
Today we can speak of the outstanding composer, conductor, and citizen, who contributed to Ukraine’s prestige throughout his life; the son of a century (born on Dec. 6, 1903), a legend of Ukrainian culture, Hero of Ukraine, People’s Artist of the USSR, Meritorious Figure of Ukrainian Arts, winner of the Shevchenko State Prize and every kind of Order of Merit. We can also enumerate all his honorary titles and awards, and list his world-famous pupils as well as all the symphonies and suites that he composed. But the main thing is that the epoch that he embodied is passing, never to return.
All those who saw this man at least once in their life — those who had the privilege of knowing the patriarch personally and visiting his home, those who saw his amiable smile from the parterre (because he usually sat in a theater box when his jubilee was being celebrated), and even those who simply knew that there was a Mykola Kolessa living on a quiet Lviv street — felt as if they had just been orphaned, not just his family that lavished love and care on Kolessa, protected him from pushy journalists, and tried to persuade him to stop smoking that pipe. We have all been orphaned and feel emptiness.
It is unlikely that Kolessa would have liked this, for he loved life and people too much. It is difficult to think of a person whom he may have hurt or to imagine that he could fail to greet someone he knew — he usually did so in a respectful and dignified manner by tipping his hat and making a slight bow. Only elderly Lviv residents greeted people like this. This habit has disappeared now, as is the special constitution of a soul that tends to reject the speeds that kill spirituality.
Mykola Kolessa was born in Sambir into the family of the prominent folklorist Filaret Kolessa. The father named his son Mykola in accordance with the wishes of the Ukrainian music classic Mykola Lysenko and thus determined his destiny, the difficult destiny of a musician who devoted himself to promoting the culture of his people. To tell the truth, it took some time for the son to sense his vocation: he began to study medicine but quickly realized that he had to devote himself exclusively to music.
He graduated from the Prague Higher School of Music, where he was taught by the well-known Czech composer, Professor Vitezslav Novak. Kolessa composed symphonic music, chamber and choral pieces, romances and other songs, as well as film scores. His artistic manner is easily recognizable: “With deep and well-developed Ukrainian roots, it dates back to the period when the human voice was the only musical instrument. In this case, this voice finally began to sing in Ukrainian.” Incidentally, Kolessa used to add other instruments to the orchestra so that it sounded more like a Hutsul folk music ensemble.
Kolessa was always brimming with energy: when he taught at the Lysenko Higher Musical Institute, he founded Western Ukraine’s first professional conductors’ courses, which gave birth to the fine traditions that distinguish representatives of the Lviv school of conducting from other Ukrainian and foreign performers.
Why do we revere Kolessa so much? Because he lived the way Man should live. “It was my father who handed down his life’s credo to me,” he once confessed. “Nulla dies sine linea — ‘Not a day without a line.’ I try to ‘tick off’ every day that I live and ask myself every evening, what good I have done.” When asked whether he was happy, he usually said, “Moments of happiness occur when you are working and things go smoothly. It is such a great pleasure when you are working with flying colors! Inspiration... I don’t know what to call it exactly, perhaps a desire to work. In that case it was so easy and cheerful to work. So I miss this feeling.”
I once asked the composer to recall the moments of his life that were burned into his memory. He was silent for a few seconds and then told me that when he was a little boy, he once ran after the ambulance that carried his mother to hospital. In the stormy days of the 1918 Ukrainian-Polish show-down she was working at an outdoor “field kitchen” in Lviv. She was going home one day when she was shot at through the fence surrounding the Armenian cathedral. He remembers standing next to the door of his father’s room, listening to a red-haired man singing a Ukrainian folk song, while father was writing down the lyrics. That was Ivan Franko. Or he would recall the days of World War II, when he regularly traveled from Lviv to Stanislav to take part in choir rehearsals: this helped his family to keep its head above water. One time he was returning home very late after curfew, and he had to hide. He said he still remembered how hard his heart was beating in his chest and how tasty the tea seemed, when he finally reached his friends’ place.
He wished he had known how to fight with his fists and be aggressive. He kept silent at a conservatory meeting in Stalinist times, when the bosses censured Vasyl Barvinsky whom he greatly respected and loved. “In those days I was forced to sit and keep silent. Those were terrible times. Then Barvinsky was arrested, and later it was our turn. I tried to speak at that meeting. For a long time after I could not recover from my spiritual trauma, which affected my subsequent creativity. So when people claim that today’s young people are ill-mannered, brusque in speech, and never smooth things over, while people of our generation would certainly have done so, I say that I see no regress: today’s people are more determined, energetic, and free of complexes. But I am very worried that money and profit have now supplanted much more important things.”
Music, including the music of life, was his obsession. This is why he always kept a bicycle in his apartment corridor, the one he used to ride in his younger years. It seemed to me today that an old bruise still hurts me — I bashed my leg painfully against the pedal, either because of nervous tension (I am talking to Kolessa himself!) or my natural clumsiness. Kolessa apologized several times and then tried to smooth over the situation: he made a few jokes, showed me his collection of pipes, the pencil with which he wrote in his school years, and old musical scores. Oddly enough, in spite of his asceticism, he took special care of the things that reminded him of his friends, relatives, and children, as well as of the way he had matured. Regrettably, many people consider this a trifle today.
Last Sunday Lviv paid its last respects to Mykola Kolessa.
