Prague pages of the creative work of the Ukrainian composer Vasyl Barvinskyi

Abstract

Abstract The research deals with the main biographical details of the life and creative work of the outstanding Ukrainian composer, pianist and teacher Vasyl Barvinskyi (1888–1963), connected with his studies, concert and creative activities in Prague. At first Vasyl Barvinskyi received his musical education in Lviv from the famous Czech teacher Vilém Kurz, and later, on his advice, he continued his musical studies in Prague at the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University. There he attended the lectures of the outstanding Czech scientist and art critic Zdeněk Nejedlý and the esthetician, historian and art critic Otakar Hostinský, improved his piano playing in professors Kurz and Holfeld, and studied composition with professor Vítězslav Novák. It is important that a lot of facts are supplemented by interesting descriptions of events, moments of communication with his teachers, impressions of learning and creativity, which have been preserved in Barvinskyi’s epistolary heritage, as well as in the composer’s memoirs. After returning to Lviv in 1915, Vasyl Barvinskyi became a director of the Mykola Lysenko Higher Music Institute, engaged in pedagogical work and educated a lot of famous pianists and composers, and also worked as a music critic, but from 1948 to 1958 he was persecuted and imprisoned by the communist regime in Ukraine. The cycle of his piano preludes, written while studying with Vítězslav Novák, is analyzed. In the creative work of Vasyl Barvinskyi – in piano, vocal, choral, symphonic compositions – various currents of European musical culture naturally combined with bright manifestations of the Ukrainian national element.