Prayer for Ukraine

Liner Notes

by Derek Katz

Composer drawings by Aryahi Naomi Onaga

The words “Prayer for Ukraine” immediate evoke the 1885 hymn by the Ukrainian nationalist composer Mykola Lysenko (text by Oleksandr Konysky).  This hymn became a kind of spiritual anthem for an independent Ukraine after World War I, and has been used for religious services in multiple faiths and for national events, and, more recently, has been adopted internationally as a gesture of support for Ukraine in a time of war (including a performance on Saturday Night Live). Although this piece is not in this album, the specific idea of music in the style of a hymn that functions as a prayer is one of the strands that unifies this recording, which also traces the rich, complex and often troubled history of Ukraine through these works and the lives of their composers.

Maria’s City, by Zoltan Almashi (b. 1975) was composed in 2022, directly in response to the invasion of Ukraine.  Almashi has written that he “felt that the music inside of him had died,” but he resolved to write a piece dedicated to the destroyed and occupied city of Mariupol.  Composed in Kyiv bomb shelters, Maria’s City was first conceived for two cellos (Almashi is a highly accomplished professional cellist as well as a composer), and transcribed for string quartet at the request of this ensemble. The piece moves from an opening section of poignant beauty to a more tender passage that betrays its origins as a duet.  A furiously defiant middle section rises to a climax and catastrophically collapses.  The open material reassembles itself from fragments, and moves to a gentle conclusion, with only a distant echo of the defiant fanfares.

In the case of Hanna Havrylets (1958-2022), the composer herself was a victim of the Russian invasion, dying on the third day of the war, reportedly due to the inaccessibility of medical care during the hostilities.  Like the Barvinsky Prayer, Havrylets’ To Mary (1999) has some affinities with choral music (perhaps even more audible in the original string orchestra version).  This prayer is a more affirmative one, based in major modes and full textures.  It links the themes of prayer, Mary and Mariupol and lends a note of consolation and hope.

Havrylets’s Expressions (2004) is a marvel of efficiency, conjuring up a nuanced and varied emotional journey from the merest scraps of materials.  Nearly all of the piece is constructed from two very short ideas.  The first is a simple three-note figure that goes up and back down, animated through syncopation and an expressively dissonant grace note.  This shard is eloquent, but ends where it begins.  The other idea, in strong contrast, consists of a single note that is repeated in ever-faster motion.  This acceleration creates the sense of direction missing from the first idea, while lacking its mournful affect.  The two ideas are introduced and combined, rising to an emotional high point that gives way to a mysterious section with the players bowing near the bridge to produce a spooky, nasal sound.  Another process of exposition and combination leads to a serene ending, with the first violin playing high above a bed of open strings enhancing a C major chord.  

Even a capsule summary of the life of Vasyl Barvinsky (1888-1963) gives a sense of Western Ukraine as both a cultural crossroads and also a site of conflict.  Barvinsky was born to an old and intellectually significant Ukrainian family and raised in Lemberg (modern-day Lviv, also Almashi’s hometown) when it was the capital of Austrian Galicia.  His childhood piano lessons were at a school founded by a pupil of Chopin, and he did his university education and advanced study of composition in Prague.  In the interwar period, Barvinsky taught at, and was director of, the Lysenko Music Institute in a Lviv that was part of both Western Ukrainian and Polish Republics.  This career ended with the Soviet invasion of 1939, and Barvinksy was sent to a labor camp for ten years as part of the 1948 Soviet purges. During this time, Barvinsky’s manuscripts were destroyed, and he spent the last years of his life after his release attempting to reconstruct his lost works from memory. 

Barvinksy’s Prayer for string quartet is the second of two surviving movements from his Quintet for Piano and Strings.  This is a work from after Barvinsky’s release from internment, and it is not clear whether it is unfinished, or an earlier work that was only partially restored.  The Prayer is in the style of a choral hymn, with the instruments moving together in even note values.

The 1935 String Quartet is from Barvinsky’s time at the Lysenko Music Institute.  A joyful work filled with folk songs and melodies in a folk style, it bears no traces either of political unrest or of early 20th century musical modernism.  Dedicated “To Youth,” its modest dimensions and technical demands suggest that it might have been intended for student players.  The quartet opens with a themes and variations, with a theme in the common folk song form ABB, with the opening A section in minor, and the repeated B section moving from major back to minor.  The second variation is especially clever, combining a lively pizzicato version of the A section with a slower, minor version of B (inverting the original modes).  The movement also includes two fugal variations.  This is followed by a spirited dance-like scherzo that alternates bars of 3/4 and 3/8, a brief and elegiac slow movement, and a vigorous finale built from contrasting sections in the styles of folk dances.  

Almashi’s Carpathian Song (2020) was written for a Ukrainian in exile.  According the composer, “It was important for me to come up with a piece that has a melody in the Ukrainian style, and with Carpathian flavor. But at the same time, the work should sound modern and relevant.”  The song has three such melodies, a slow lament (first played by the viola), a more rhythmically free and improvisatory gesture, and a fast and simple tune.  It is in the fast section that the tension between the folk spirit and modern harmonies is most obvious.  Just as the history of Lviv gives a sense of cultural exchange over time, so too do the Carpathian mountains link people who have shared songs and dances for generations without regard to shifting national borders.