Borys Mykolayovych Lyatoshynskyi (1895-1968) - an outstanding Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor, teacher, musical and social activist - was born in January 1895 in Zhytomyr in the family of a gymnasium professor. He studied at the Zhytomyr gymnasium, which he graduated in 1913. He took his first piano lessons from his mother, who was also a good singer. The first creative attempts of the future composer belong to the gymnasium years - salon pieces for piano and a piano quartet, which were performed in Zhytomyr. In 1913, B. Lyatoshynskyi entered the Faculty of Law of Kyiv University of St. Volodymyr and, preparing to enter the conservatory, began taking private lessons from R. Glier. From 1914 to 1919, the young man studied with him at the Kyiv Conservatory in the composition class, and in 1917 he already performed as a conductor, performing the second part of his own First Symphony at a public concert in Kyiv.

After completing his studies, B. Lyatoshynskyi was left at the conservatory as a teacher of music-theoretical disciplines. During his years of work, he also gained fame as a comprehensively gifted pianist and a talented conductor. In the 1920s, the composer was actively engaged in creative and musical-social work, from 1922 to 1925 he headed the Association of Modern Music, performed a number of instrumentations of works by other authors, in particular R. Glier. From 1935 he became a professor at the Kyiv Conservatory (1935-1938), and in 1941-1944 also at the Moscow Conservatory. During the war, from 1941 to 1944, he worked in evacuation in Saratov (Russia), where he combined teaching work at the conservatory with work at the radio station named after T.G. Shevchenko. B. Lyatoshinskyi was one of the founders of the SCU, the first Chairman (elected in February 1939 at the 1st Congress of Soviet Composers of the Ukrainian SSR) and a long-time member of its board, a member of the jury of various international competitions. The composer was a multiple laureate of state prizes of the Ukrainian SSR, the USSR and the Polish People's Republic, awarded with orders and medals of these countries. In 1945 he was awarded the honorary title of Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR, in 1968 - People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR. Lyatoshinsky also studied. Belza, R. Vereshchagin, L. Graboviecki, Lesya Dychko, I. Karabyts, K. Karaev, M. Poloz, V. Sylvestrov, E. Stankovych, G. Taranov, I. Shamo, Yu. Shchurovsky, and others. B. Lyatoshynskyi is the author of two operas ("The Golden Hoop" and "Schors"), five symphonies, orchestral suites, overtures, poems, cantatas, music for films and dramatic performances, numerous chamber-instrumental ensembles, sonatas, instrumental pieces es, choral and vocal works, arrangements of folk songs, author's instrumentation of works by other composers, in particular M. Lysenko's opera "Taras Bulba" (together with L. Revutsky), violin concerto and opera "Shah-Senem" by R. Glier. The composer died suddenly on April 15, 1968 in Kyiv, where he was buried.

He showed a clear attraction to symphonic creativity and dramatic conflict concepts already in his early chamber-vocal, piano, chamber-instrumental and orchestral works (the final edition of the First Symphony – 1923). In 1926, the milestone symphonic work of B. Lyatoshynsky appeared - "Overture on four Ukrainian folk themes". As the composer later wrote about R. Glier's overture, it was the first work in which he began to seriously study the riches of musical folklore. B. Lyatoshinskyi is primarily attracted by the richness of the scale and intonation-variants of the ancient ceremonial music of the Fresnianka, as well as the features of the epic unfolding of musical thought. In general, the work has a painting character to a certain extent, which is due to the active alternating development of intonations of different melodies and timbre-register individualization of melodic lines. The composition is performed in a freely interpreted sonata form with an introduction. The introduction is based on two themes, three-part with an active development and a brass canon in the middle part. In the exposition, the themes complement each other. The development is presented as an alternate change of actively developing and picture-colorful episodes. The reprise of the work – dynamic, with a small development episode at the end – logically completes the bright and saturated composition with a linearized polymelodic texture.

The composer created one of his most outstanding works in the genre of symphonic music – the Second Symphony, which is complex in its figurative content, impressively embodied psychological states and acutely dramatic concept – in 1936. This is a three-part piece with a rich sound, full of emotionally contrasting themes, their texture-timbral and rhythmic transformations, conflicting clashes of musical images. In this work, the author showed himself to be a master of large-scale forms, symphonic leitmotivism, a connoisseur of orchestral writing techniques, polyphonic linearity, and spatially realized sounds. The main image-emotional conflict is not between the main and secondary parts of the first part, but between the themes of the introduction and exposition of the sonata form. The introduction, which outlines the plan for the unfolding of the figurative content of the entire symphony, is based on two themes - a focused, epic-dramatic one led by the strings, and an expectedly hidden one in the wind instruments. They are immediately subjected to an active dramatic polyphonized development, anticipating the vicissitudes of unfolding dramaturgy of the following parts. Both themes - a heavy and decisive main and a lyrical and singing minor one - are saturated with development already in the exposition. The theme of the side part tends to the nature of monologue statements of philosophical content. The development, which has three waves of dramatic development and is based on the development of the themes of the introduction and the side part, logically turns into a mirror reprise. In it, the secondary theme acquires a victorious and heroic sound. The active dramatism of the development of themes leads to the appearance of another developmental section - coda, which summarizes the figurative vicissitudes of the first part. The second part is filled with epic-lyrical moods of the ballad type. In the middle part, the modified theme of the main part of the first part unexpectedly emerges, after which an extensive fragment of a developmental nature is introduced. The finale exhibits images similar in sound to the images of the first part. The intense drama of their development acquires a heroic color here.

The second theme of the introduction and the main part of the first part are "incorporated" into the musical fabric, and later - intonations from the opening section of the introductory part. The replay is also built on the mirror principle. We again witness the combination – this time contrapuntal – of the side part with the intonations of the first theme of the introduction. The symphony ends with a majestic epic-pathetic coda.

Unfortunately, the Second Symphony was subjected to devastating criticism as a "formalist" work, full of "inadequate and non-Soviet in spirit" means of expression. This criticism not only put the survival of the composer and his family on the brink (because of it, B. Lyatoshynsky actually began to be denied a suitable job), but also caused irreparable damage to the development of all Ukrainian symphonic music, pushed it back to the primitive orchestral and sound "pictures" whether programmatic and simplified quasi-programmatic symphony oriented to the music of O. Borodin, O. Glazunov (H. Maiboroda's First Symphony), M. Rimsky-Korsakov and P. Tchaikovsky (K. Dominchen's First Symphony), O. Scriabin is "accessible" to the working masses (Symphony of M. Gosenpud). All ideological corrections related to musical creativity stemmed directly from the works and statements of the most basic Soviet connoisseur and critic of musical art - Y. Stalin. It was during these years that he identified the "founders of national musical classics" for Russia (M. Glynka) and for Ukraine (M. Lysenko). According to his instructions, a distinction was made between "useful" music for working people and "harmful" music. The so-called harmful was actually taboo. This group included all spiritual and church works (including foreign composers, as well as Ukrainian composers of the 17th-19th centuries), works written on the texts of repressed or recognized as "nationalist" or "bourgeois" writers, or émigré writers , as well as (since 1934) musical works by composers who, for various reasons, ended up in exile.

In the second half of the 1930s, when Soviet art officials stopped considering traditional peasant folk music as "class hostile", as was the case during the pogroms of national-patriotic artistic associations by representatives of ultra-left ("proletarian") musical organizations in the period curtailment of the Ukrainianization policy, composers' interest in national musical folklore began to renew. A number of instrumental works based on folk melodies appeared (among the most prominent ones are the First Symphony (1936) by A. Rudnytskyi, the First Symphony and the symphonic poem "Taras Shevchenko" (both 1939) by K. Dankevich, the Symphony (1937) by K. Shipovich and Suite "On the Dniprobuda" (1929) by Y. Meitus), which are combined with modern means of compositional technique, as well as the modernist Symphony (1937) by S. Turkevich-Lisovska, a composer who actually graduated from composition studies in Vienna.

Works of B. Lyatoshynskyi

Enormous achievements were achieved by Ukrainian composers in the 1960s and 1980s in all areas of creativity. They were especially noticeable in symphonic music. In the 1960s, the last two symphonies of B. Lyatoshinsky were created (Fourth - 1963, Fifth "Slavic" - 1965 - 1966).

The monothematic dramaturgy of the three-part (parts follow each other attacca) Fourth Symphony is acutely conflicted. The work is saturated with the most concentrated thematic material. At the heart of the idea is the conflict of humane and anti-humane, subjective-personal, creative principles with objectively-external, prejudicedly hostile images. The theme of the introduction to the first part is the main theme of the work (intonationally, this theme is derived from one of the composer's most outstanding works - the piano cycle "Reflection", written 40 years earlier). From this theme actually grows the vast majority of further thematic formations, which become the basis for the formation of almost all - even different in content - musical images of the symphony. The theme of the symphony is characterized by sharp seventh intonations with chromatic endings of motifs, the rigidity of polyharmonic – often fourthvertical lines, sharp drama of thematic clashes in the process of developmental transformations. The timbre characteristics of individual instruments (for example, bass clarinet, trumpets, cellos, or bells) and the almost soloing independence of the parts of some of them play a huge role in the work. The exposition of all thematic formations here is combined with their development and formation. This achieves the maximum fusion of structural elements. Huge segments of progressively developing movement with final culminations follow one another. The second part serves as the philosophical and psychological center of the work. The reprise of the finale is the highest culminating point in the dramatic development of the symphony's music. This culmination is suddenly interrupted by vertical brass sounds and the inexorable theme of the introduction, which brutally defeats everyone and everything with its anti-humanity. After the mighty vicissitudes of fierce struggle, the composer seems to confirm the thesis that struggle is life, and it, in turn, is only a small episode in eternal Time, which constitutes the essence of Being...

The development of dramatic-tragedy symphonicism, the highest achievement of which was one of the most perfect Ukrainian symphonies - the Fourth Symphony of B. Lyatoshynskyi - is also represented by the Second "Memory of a Comrade" for string orchestra and cello (1966) and the Third "Kyiv" (1972) symphonies A Shtogarenko, the Third (1964) by B. Yarovynskyi, the first two symphonies (1962; 1965) by V. Gubarenko and the Symphony for String Orchestra (1964-1965) by I. Shamo.

An objective-philosophical approach to the images understood in music is revealed in the last one - the Fifth Symphony (1965-1966) by B. Lyatoshynskyi. This is an interesting example of a conflict-dramatic refraction of the epic tradition of symphonic thinking. The leading figure in the symphony is the image of the legendary hero Ilya Muromets from the epic epic, whose characterization is based on the ancient chant about Ilya and Tsar Kalin presented in the introduction. The author chose ancient South Slavic and Russian folk songs as the intonation basis of the theme of the symphony - hence the name of the piece. In the process of development, these themes, which are different in character and type of melodic-harmonic organization, converge, transform, and diverge. Polyphony becomes the main means of material development in the symphony. Imitative and contrasting polyphony is logically combined by the author with the dominant linearity of thinking. The picture of inner concentration and self-contemplation in the second part is interestingly solved by the composer through the depiction of the almost fairy-tale beauty of the twilight landscape and pictures of the Balkan nature. The dramaturgical peak of the concept is the third part - a powerful epic image of a national holiday and merriment, where the intonations of the Russian song, already known from the first part, grow into a majestic and triumphant festive jingle. It should be noted that it was in the Fifth Symphony that B. Lyatoshinsky reached the greatest heights of orchestral mastery and timbre dramaturgy.

The combination of intense drama with the epicness of pictorial images and the rich use of folk intonations in the style of new folklorism is inherent, in addition to B. Lyatoshynskyi's Fifth, also to L. Kolodub's Duma Symphony "Shevchenko Images" (1964), written for the 150th anniversary of his birth T. Shevchenko.