Collegium Musicum NJ & Culture for Understanding and Tolerance Concert

61 Nassau Street,Princeton NJ 08542

22 April, 2023

Description

Collegium Musicum of New Jersey announces its 2023 Concert Series, "Culture for Understanding and Tolerance." The history and development of music in different cultures and nationalities around the globe will be revealed through multiple performances throughout New Jersey. The music of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, North and South America will be represented and selected from Baroque, Classical, Romantic periods, as well as contemporary music and 21st century compositions by living composers. In addition to performances by chamber orchestra, soloists, and small chamber music groups, each event will include a short lecture illustrating its musical connections to its history and cultures. We strongly believe the 2023 Concert Series "Culture for Understanding and Tolerance" will enable our communities to better understand and enjoy each other's unique national culture, traditions and historical development through the performance of music along with presentations of other art forms. Ukrainian Music and Culture: ---------------------------- The political conditions in 19th century Europe spawned a rapid growth of Nationalism and Patriotism across the continent. “The pride of conquering nations and the struggle for freedom of suppressed ones gave rise to strong emotions that inspired the works of many creative artists.” We are well aware of countless composers working within this forceful stream of romanticism, ranging from Smetana and Dvořák in the Czech Lands, Edvard Grieg in Norway, Jean Sibelius in Finland, Elgar and Delius in England, Albeniz, Granados and de Falla in Spain, and a whole Russian national school established by Mikhail Glinka. As in many other parts of Europe, the emergence of a national spirit in Ukraine resulted in a movement that cultivated popular Ukrainian culture. At the head of this Ukrainian movement for national musical identity we find Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912), widely considered the father of Ukrainian Music. “Beyond providing the inspiration for a national compositional school and founding numerous choirs across the proto-Ukrainian countryside, he is also a national hero whose music academy in Kyiv was a hub for intellectuals, poets and musicians.” Lysenko composed his patriotic hymn in 1885, during a period when Ukrainian culture and language was once again suppressed by the government of Imperial Russia. Ukraine has long struggled for independence, with the borders shifting countless time as different conquerors fought over a land rich in natural resource and culture. A short-lived revolution in 1919 was brutally suppressed and the Soviet occupation inflicted one tragedy after another on the Ukrainian people. During the famine of the 1930s, millions of Ukrainian peasants starved to death because of the criminal policies of Joseph Stalin. We must add “the Nazi occupation of Western Ukraine, when the Final Solution was first implemented in cities whose wealth and cultural standing depended entirely on the vast Jewish population – cities like Lviv or Ivano-Frankivsk; the deportation of the Hutsul people in the 1930s and the deportations of the Crimean Tatar population from the beautiful Crimean peninsula, at the command of various Russian heads of state, starting with the Tsars, repeated under Stalin and then once again in 2014 after the Russian occupation. And we all know about the atrocities being committed under Vladimir Putin right now. The Ukrainian region suffered considerable political instability and oppression during the early 20th century. In fact, Ukrainians entered World War I on the side of both the Central Powers, under Austria, and the Triple Entente, under Russia. “Three-and-a-half million Ukrainians fought with the Imperial Russian Army,” while 250,000 fought for the Austro-Hungarian Army.” With World War I destroying both Empires, the Russian Revolution of 1917 plunged the entire region into a long and bitterly fought war of independence. Several Ukrainian states briefly emerged, and the internationally recognized Ukrainian People’s Republic was declared on 23 June 1917. Ukraine sided with Poland against the Bolsheviks, but in the end, Ukraine became a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922. Political instabilities and ever-changing national borders aside, the definition of Ukrainian identity already emerged in the mid-19th century in the writings of the poet, folklorist, and ethnographer Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861). Considered the founder of modern Ukrainian literature, Shevchenko wrote poems in the Ukrainian language that openly ridiculed members of the Russian Imperial House. In 1847 he was politically convicted, arrested, and exiled for explicitly promoting the independence of Ukraine. Occupiers of Ukrainian lands have always successfully banned or suppressed large-scale musical expression, such as opera and symphonic music. However, as commentators have noted, “they have not been able to crack down on the more intimate musical forms. As such, choral singing and chamber music are the most authentic examples of Ukrainian music. Up until the end of the 1920s, Ukraine enjoyed a certain degree of cultural freedom. All that changed when Joseph Stalin took control of the USSR. The unprecedented suffering inflicted by the ruthless state-sponsored bureaucracy of Stalinist Russia had a devastating effect on Ukrainian society. In particular, artists and performers frequently found themselves under the microscope of an all-embracing and uncompromising state machinery, which demanded the adaptations of classical models in pursuit of socialist realism. In music, this meant a monumental approach, and an exalted rhetoric based on optimism. And Ukraine’s most valuable achievements and accomplishments were appropriated by the Soviet State. ** ** Taken from the following web site https://interlude.hk/mykola-lysenko-the-father-of-ukrainian-music/