L. Ukrainka – M. Lysenko’s «Oriental melody»: specifics of recreation of Oriental imagery

Statement of the problem. The article analyzes the ways of recreating oriental features in the song “Oriental Melody” (“Skhidna melodiia”) by Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko, based on a poem by Ukrainian poetess, playwright, short story writer Lesia Ukrainka. This song, or “solospiv”, as Lysenko called his vocal and piano works, was created in the last period of the composer’s work, when, working in this genre, he began to use poems by modern Ukrainian poets, including Lesia Ukrainka. This fact most likely caused some changes in the style of these works in comparison with Lysenko’s more traditional early works. “Oriental melody” has not been previously studied by musicologists, so this article conducts its composition analysis in order to understand its structure and ways of interpreting the poetic text The purpose of the study is to identify the specific embodiment of oriental features in the musical language of the song. Results and conclusions. Lesia Ukrainka’s poem “Oriental Melody” from her second Crimean cycle “Crimean Echoes” (“Krymski vidhuky”) is a love poem, in which oriental images are interspersed with exotic landscapes of the Crimea. The composer strives to follow the structure of the poem, which led to the creation of a five-part composition with a variational repetition of the first part at the very end. The article reveals that Lysenko’s “Oriental Melody” contains a number of well-established ways for Western European music to recreate the oriental image. In addition, the song contains features of recitative, sometimes giving the impression of a theatrical monologue. Lysenko often changes the meter, avoids repetition in rhythmic structures, using complex rhythms and seeks for through-composed type of composition. The lack of scholars’ attention to the song “Oriental Melody” can be explained by the dominance of the folklore paradigm in the studies of Lysenko’s music, which doesn’t focus on oriental themes. However, it is interesting how exactly this song became a meeting place for two different worldviews. Lesia Ukrainka was one of the brightest Ukrainian modernist writers, and Mykola Lysenko, who is considered the founder of the Ukrainian national school of composers, created his music in the style of late romanticism. Thus, although the oriental scenery of the song is recreated by a number of clichés, the sincerity of the protagonist is indisputable, and the work as a whole has its own artistic value.