“Chumak song” for baritone and piano by Volodymyr Runchak: compositional and genre-stylistic features
Authors: Liu Wenshu 
Published: July 2022

The topicality. Musical works of the famous Ukrainian composer, conductor, public activist, the passionate propagandist of modern music of Volodymyr Runchak today are in the area of special attention of music critics and musicologists. After all, his works today represent the advanced position of the Ukrainian contemporary art music. A confirmation of this thought is the widespread recognition of the creative works of the artist both in Ukraine and in many countries of the world; his works are at the most famous festivals of contemporary music and in prestigious concert halls in many countries are performed by the most famous musicians and bands.

The purpose of this article is the implementation of historiographical analysis of the composer’s creative work of the famous Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Runchak. Tasks, which are subordinated to the main aim, is to identify areas and aspects of musicological research, the musical composer, as well as a statement of their basic ideas. The ultimate goal of the analysis is the identification of the unexplored and untouched aspects and genre of the areas of musical creativity of the author.

The methodology of the work is centered on the principles of historicism, source studies, and documentary, which provides an analysis of the researches of the composer’s musical creativity in connection with cultural, historical and artistic phenomena and in their interaction.  In addition, methods of retrospective, structural-system analysis, interpretation of musicological considerations, isolation and generalization are involved.

The results obtained in the course of achieving the aims in this paper concentrates on the analytical interpretations of the major musicological publications on the music of V. Runchak and demonstrate the range of problems and issues are already involved in scientific development.

The scientific novelty of the work lies in the implementation of historiographical analysis of the composer’s creative work of the famous Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Runchak, identifying areas and aspects of existing musicological studies of the musical creativity of the composer and highlighting the unexplored areas of musical creativity of the author, that are seen promising for further scientific practices.

The practical importance of historiographical analysis conducted in this work lies in the possibility of using it for future studies of musical creativity V. Runchak, systematization of scientific information in the field of art regarding the research on musical creativity by contemporary Ukrainian composers.

Conclusions. The composer in his works successfully realizes the ideological and figurative dominants inherent in the traditions of the ancient folk-song genre, which is the Chumak song, in the modern musical-linguistic paradigm. The author vividly stylizes the melodic-thematic component of his work in the folk spirit, using typical frets, intonation, and other structural elements inherent in the Ukrainian epic melody, which includes this genre variety of Ukrainian folklore. On the other hand, the author organically invests this melodic-thematic construct in the bright “facet” of modern musical style, which is fully saturated primarily with the piano part, which in general forms the unique and interesting effect of «new folklore». Identified and analyzed in this work compositional and technological factors and elements of the system of means of expression involved in this work, not only contribute to the significant freshness of its musical-linguistic and genre-style features, but are directed by the author, primarily obtaining the necessary image and emotional characteristics and experiences in accordance with the chosen genre archetype and its conceptual meanings. And in this sense, “The Milky Way” by Volodymyr Runchak is quite an illustrative work in a rich and diverse array of modern Ukrainian chamber and vocal music.