Recently several Ukrainian cities have hosted presentations of the album book The World of Mykola Lysenko. National Identity, Music and Politics of Ukraine in the 19th-early 20th century by Tamara Bulat and Taras Filenko. This work not only reveals the life and oeuvre of the founder of the Ukrainian book, but the entire epoch, when such significant personalities as Olena Pchilka, Mykhailo Drahomanov, Lesia Ukrainka, Mykhailo Starytsky, Ivan Nechui-Levytsky, Ivan Franko, Hnat Khotkevych, Ostap Veresai, Solomia Krushelnytska, Maria Zankovetska, Fedir Stravynsky, Kyrylo Stetsenko and other leading figures of the Ukrainian culture lived. Those were friends and fellows of Mykola Lysenko, many of them had an impact on his creative work. The album is also proof of the titanic work of its authors. The luxurious book with a CD of recordings of Lysenko’s piano and vocal works was published with the assistance of the Department of Press, Education, and Culture of the US Embassy in Ukraine and the foundation Vidrodzhennia. The work was presented by one of its authors, Taras FILENKO, who holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is an ethnomusicologist and musician. At the moment he resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US, but he previously lived in Ukraine, where he was a teacher at the Kyiv Conservatory and worked at the Institute of Ukrainian Studies. The second author, Tamara Bulat, regrettably, passed away in 2004. She was a student of Ostap Lysenko, the son of the outstanding composer, and dedicated the book Mykola Lysenko’s World… to him.
Mr. Filenko, please tell us who is the book’s target audience?
“The presentations of the album book have taken place in Kyiv, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv, and Lviv. Concerts and presentations are scheduled in other cities, specifically Odesa, Donetsk, and in the Crimea. Hopefully, these events will take off somewhat later, and will coincide with the concerts and lectures in Ukrainian centers beyond Ukraine, in particular, in Moscow and St. Petersburg. We reckoned mainly on young people, students of music academies and universities, as well as all those who are fond of Ukrainian culture. In his time Lysenko would organize chorus concert tours across Ukraine, to show the gems of Ukrainian music to a broad audience. I consider that as many Ukrainians as possible should know about Ukrainian culture, because personalities rather than bureaucratic institutions have been and still are the main engines promoting the national culture.
“For the most part, people know little of Ukrainian culture, politics, and music of the 19th-early 20th century, which is no surprise, taking into account the lack of corresponding education and the 100 years of anti-national governmental policy on Ukraine’s territory. I will give you a curious example. Before the performance at the Kharkiv Academy of Arts, which was a success, by the way, my brother who comes from Zaporizhia asked me, What are you going to tell about Ukrainian culture here, in Slobozhanshchyna? After giving it a thought, I offered that he ask people what they knew about Lysenko. We went to the wonderful Sumska Street, stopped a dozen random passengers, and then talked to a young man who said that Lysenko was a writer and also composed operas.
“This is not only the tragedy of the people that we surveyed. Above all, this is the tragedy of those who were supposed to bring to them the grandeur and beauty of our culture. But on a hot day two boys and a girl stayed after the presentation in Zaporizhia and asked me with vivid interest about the artists of that time, painters, writers, and composers — crossing the ocean and spending a night in a stuffed passenger train was worth it for those three persons.”
The book “was written” for over 30 years. When did you become involved in its creation?
“I want to make it precise: it took many years to collect the materials, photo documents, archival materials, including the epistolary documents. These materials were collected not only in Ukraine, but also in Polish, Austrian, Czech, Russian, Bulgarian archives, and later — in Canada and the US. A part of the book was prepared during the times when there was no Xerox, fax, or computers. The photos were given by museums or archives for one night only to make a photograph of them, which I did with success and failures at night in our bathroom, damaging my eyesight and the bath with chemical reagents. Today I recall this jokingly, but such were the realities of those years. Some materials were brought out from the so-called special depositories, special funds with limited access, because the materials of these archives were banned by censors, because they were considered ‘bourgeois-nationalistic.’ However, I want to stress, owing to the assistance of our friends, fellows, and partisans in many countries, this work has been published and became, according to the professor of ethnomusicology of world repute Akin Euba, a sort of encyclopedia of Ukrainian music-cultural life of the previous century.
“I became involved in this project as a schoolboy: I rewrote Lysenko’s letters which had not been published, looked for photographs in different archives abroad. Later I took interest in the combination of poetry and music, and the music culture of contemporary Ukrainian artists. Later I again turned to the primary sources about the shaping of Ukrainian professional music. And the colossal personality of Mykola Lysenko, a composer, folklorist, a worker of the national culture, as well as his followers, became the core of my research. Having worked for many years abroad, I saw how scant the knowledge of Ukrainian culture, in particular, the music culture, was abroad. There are practically no monographs on Ukrainian music, and what is published by English-language publications is frequently shown in a subjective way, in line with the cultural-political orientation of the author.”
What impressed or surprised you most, when you were collecting the information about Lysenko?
“What impressed me most was the fact of how many materials of Ukrainian studies from the 19th century had not been studied or even described, and are still waiting for researchers. The librarians and archivists are real devotees, and professionals should study primary sources, not general text-books. To understand and explain any artistic or cultural event, one ought to know the epoch, the politics of that period, the traditions, to know the communication between outstanding figures, even getting deep into the mysteries of their private lives.”
The book was published with the assistance of the Department of Press, Education, and Culture of the US Embassy in Ukraine and the Vidrodzhennia Foundation. Why have these two institutions agreed to fund this expensive publication, as well as the music CD attached to it?
“These institutions have partially funded the book’s printing and release of the music CD with recordings of Lysenko’s works. Unfortunately, no Ukrainian institution, in spite of numerous requests, has managed to provide support for this publication. Half of the press-run was published at the expense of the publishing house Maisternia Knyhy, the second part was funded by the American side. The money from the book’s sale will go to pay grants and financing of other music projects. The press-run was small, totaling 2,000 copies, so only part of them will go to the bookstore network.”
An Internet publication said that this is “a unique Ukrainian-American publication. The book is authored by American scholars, musicians Tamara Bulat and her son, the pianist Taras Filenko.” For how long have you been residing in the US?
“Both my mother and I have been and remain Ukrainian scholars. Has Rachmaninoff become an American composer, only because he lived in the US, or Stravinsky — a French one? It does not matter where you live, the main thing is what you do and with what culture you identify with. I don’t remember any solo concert of mine or a speech at a conference where the works of Ukrainian composers did not appear and Ukrainian themes were not highlighted. As for the uniqueness of the Ukrainian-American publication, it is indeed so. The money to fund it was raised completely by the American side. As with its English-language version several years ago, the funding came totally from individuals and cultural organizations of Canadian Ukrainians, specifically the foundation Ukraine’s Millennium.”
Lysenko worked for four years according to his diploma, as they say now; in 1864 he graduated from the Kyiv University, and later defended a candidate’s work and became a Candidate of the Natural Sciences. But, as Mykhailo Starytsky wrote, music rather than state service was the goal of his life. The dream to become a professional musician drove him to Leipzig where he entered a conservatory. Namely from Leipzig did his career as a musician begin, there he won his first recognition. In your opinion, what things besides talent helped Lysenko fulfill his dream?
“This is a complicated question. I don’t know whether he fulfilled his dreams or reached his goal. In my opinion, everyone chooses a goal for himself/herself, believing that it is important and spiritually necessary. I know for sure that his life would have been much easier if he had not devoted himself to the idea of the Ukrainian patriotism. But the most important thing is that he belonged to the cohort of those who ‘slotted the rock’ in heat and cold, paraphrasing Ivan Franko’s words. He worked as an obsessed artist, like Michelangelo, Johann Sebastian Bach, Antoni Gaudi, those who cannot live otherwise. Thomas Addison once said, ‘Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.’
“I dream of making Lysenko known not only in Ukraine, but also abroad, so that not only professionals and students cared about these publications in Ukraine, but governmental bodies as well. Lysenko in music is like Shevchenko in literature. Those were not only outstanding personalities of Ukrainian culture, but rather carriers of the national ideas, champions of the truth. The role of the Mykola Lysenko Prize should be promoted, as should the competition named after him and Ukrainian classical music in general. Incidentally, this year in Toronto the recordings of all vocal works by Lysenko are being finished. This is being done at the initiative of the British singer Pavlo Hunka with the participation of leading musicians of the global scale. As a child I dreamed of becoming an archeologist. Perhaps I will come back to this idea. Today I am professionally involved in Ukrainian music. I am trying to do everything to promote our music treasures in the world, break the wall of provincial snobbism which is still surrounding Ukrainian studies, above all because of the biases of those who write about the art of Ukraine, frequently not having the slightest idea of the grandeur, richness, and beauty of our culture. Another dream of mine is to launch the course of ethnomusicology in Ukraine’s music establishments. But these plans depend on the understanding and farsightedness of Ukrainian leadership in culture. Hopefully, the album book about the music-cultural life, political trends, censorship in Ukraine of the 19th-early 20th century, the devoted work of Mykola Lysenko and his contemporaries, will become a brick building the national culture of my homeland.”
