Musical symbolism in the mirror of vocal performance poetics (on the material of Lesia Dychko’s vocal cycle “Moods”)
Authors: Xiong Yahuan 
Published: March 2024

Statement of the problem. Vocal performance is an impotent component of the national dimension of Ukrainian musical culture, it is not only choral, but also the solo singing. Currently, it is singers who are often raising the bar of interest in the composer’s person. Getting to know the meaning-making mechanism of symbolism owing to the isolation of the singing-gender component of the vocal image focuses the urgency of the topic at a practical level. In our case, it is the timbre-image of the soprano as the personification of “Ukrainian femininity”. The originality of female chamber and vocal lyrics is evidenced by Lesia Dychko’s early opus “Moods”, which represents the poetry by Lesia Ukrainka, a brilliant woman-poetess, whose name is not well known in China. The non-accidental nature of such a “meeting” of spiritually related female artists attracts the attention of performers. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. Given the multifaceted relevance of the chosen topic, the purpose of the study combines the following scientific tasks: to reveal the peculiarities of the musical symbolism of Lesia Dychko’s vocal cycle “Moods” and its performance reproduction from the point of view of the timbre role of the soprano on the example of the premiere performance of the composition. The research material is a video recording of the first performance of Lesia Dychko’s cycle the “Moods” by the laureate of international competitions Yuliia Radkevych (soprano) accompanied by the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Kharkiv Philharmonic (the conductor – People’s Artist of Ukraine Yurii Yanko), in the author’s evening of the composer at Kharkiv (2017, December 7). Research methods are determined by its topic, material and aim. The key research approach are cognitive, which unit the stylistic, genre, intonation and performing types of music analysis. The symbol is understood as a musical-auditory phenomenon aimed at reflecting the invisible, hidden in the available timbre-sound images of the composition (at the different levels of text semantics – poetic, intonation, timbre-performing). Lesia Dychko’s style is quite often the subject of musicological studies. Let us point to the monograph by S. Hrytsya (2012), the article by H. Lunina (2013). The theory of the symbol in music is represented by the concept of Yu. Nikolaievska and L. Shapovalova (2021), as well as an interesting article by P. Palmer (2007). However, the study on the problem of the performing poetics in the system of value coordinates of musical symbolism is absent. The results of the research. The three-movement composition of “Moods” combined miniatures from different years: “On a Boat” (1964), “The Little Apple Tree” (1965–1968), “The Night Was Quiet and Dark” (1964). In 1980, the author combined individual solos into a vocal cycle like memories from the album. The reflected moods – the heroes, their feelings, events, imaginative states – are not connected by a single plot, but belong to the “biography” of one Author and are united by the sound of a lyrical soprano voice. The introduction of Oleksii Palazhchenko’s poem “The Little Apple Tree” into Lesia Ukrainka’s poetic text leads to double world quality – the stereophony of “feminine” and “masculine” in a single artistic concept. According to the author’s plan, neither the words nor the music of “Moods” are dominant: they should be consonant. Under such conditions, the completeness of the sound-image picture is visualized, which is built on the counterpoint of the soprano cantilena singing embodying of the concept of “the heart”, and the timbre contrast of the piano (or string orchestra) – the personification of the voices of nature (“a starling flashed far away”, “the wind sighed sadly in the garden”). The theme of nature runs through the entire vocal cycle. Therefore, the “core” of female love lyrics in the first vocal opus of the young gifted author is purely romantic psychology of human feelings. However, their embodiment by the leading singer, in the richness of soprano timbres, reveals more than the usual world of female love: there is a qualitative jump in the listener’s perception of the meanings of music – the transition from an image to a symbol. Conclusion. On the example of the performance analysis of Lesia Dychko’s vocal cycle “Moods”, the problem of symbolizing musical language as a sign of modern stylistic thinking is posed. The understanding and reproduction of the symbol as a musical-auditory phenomenon presupposes the singer’s previous thorough intellectual work aimed at the musical work as a cryptogram, in which, including due to the timbre personification of the voice, the symbolic artistic world comes to life. In Lesia Dychko’s cycle, it is the secret world of female Love, inspired by the deep images of Lesia Ukrainka’s poetry and passed through the composer’s own female self, personified by the soprano timbre. Thanks to her high culture of symbolic thinking and excellent command of vocal technique, the first performer of the work, the soprano singer Yuliya Radkevich visualized the “hidden world” of Lesya Dychko’s love lyrics “Moods” vividly, organically, inspired, with a subtle sense of spiritual kinship with its lyrical heroine and its Author. Hence, the first performance of the cycle presented by Yulia Radkevich appears as an ideal version of the feminine interpretation. Thus, Lesia Ukrainka’s voiced poetry, dedicated to the greatness of the female spirit, the Gift of Love, testifies to the ontological ability of music to serve as an eternal symbol – of the invisible world of the human soul.