“TO VICTORY” FOR VOCAL SEXTET AND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BY OLENA ILNYTSKA: MYTHOPOETICS OF THE WORK
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbmusica.2025.2.23Keywords:
Olena Ilnytska’s work, theme of war, symphonic work, symphony, symphonic musicAbstract
The works of the Ukrainian composer Olena Ilnytska (born in 1977) are well known not only in Ukraine, but also abroad. Her works are performed by both domestic and foreign musicians. The piece “To Victory” for vocal sextet and symphony orchestra is an example of contemporary Ukrainian symphonism, combining Western European and national traditions with techniques of contemporary musical language. In it, as in other genres, the author's mythopoetic thinking is evident. She reflects on a complex, historically established genre that has a philosophical basis in the history of world musical culture. “To Victory” is indicative both for understanding of mythopoetics of symphony music and the author’s symphonic thinking, which revealed itself in the skill of large-scale thinking, combining different musical-semantical intonation models, uniting them in an integrate structure. Mythologization takes place on genre, thematic, and timbre levels.
References
Berehova, Olena. “Art of the unbreakable: Ukrainian composer’s creativity against Russian aggression”. In Musicological thought of Dnipro region, vol. 27(2), 2024, pp. 115–114. https://doi.org/10.33287/222446
Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Vol. 2 : Mythical Thought, Yale University Press, 1955.
Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (W.R.Trask, Trans.). Ed. Harvest/HBJ Publishers, New York,1957.
Haidai, Mykhailo. Folk lamentations. In Ethnographic Bulletin, vol. 7, 1928, pp. 67–72.
Hrushevskyi, Mykhailo. History of Ukrainian Literature. Lybid, 1993.
Huzhva, Oleksandr. “Ukrainian symphony in time – space of culture”. In Bulletin of the Kharkiv State Academy of design and arts, 4, 2007, pp. 19–35.
Kopytsia, Marianna. Symphonies by B. Liatoshynskyi. Epoch, Collisions, Drama. Muzychna Ukraina, 1990.
Lychkovakh, Volodymyr. The philosophy of ethnoculture: theoretical, methodological and aesthetic aspects of Ukrainian cultural history. Parapan, 2011.
Nimchuk, Vasyl. “On the origin of the song ‘Plyve Kacha po Tysyni’ ”. In Word and Time, vol. 7, 2015, pp. 79–85.
Safian, Dzvenyslava. “Olena Ilnytska: I don’t like to repeat myself”. In The Claquers, March 15, 2023. https://theclaquers.com/posts/11066 (26.07.2025)
Shchelkanova, Svitlana. “The poetics of the symphony genre in the discourse of cognitive musicology”. In Problems of interaction between art, pedagogy, and theory and practice of education, vol. 65, 2023, рр. 50–62. https://doi.org/10.34064/khnum1-65.03
Sokil, Vasyl. “About the song ‘Plyve Kacha po Tysyni’ ”. In Ethnographic notebooks. Philological series, vol. 4, 2014, pp. 817–821.
Tukova, Iryna. “Art Music and War: Ukrainian Case 2022”. In Musicologica Brunensia, vol. 58(2,) 2023, pp.193–204. https://doi.org/10.5817/MB2023-2-12
Tukova, Iryna. “Vox Humana of War: Ukrainian Art Music as a Mode of Resistance (2022–24)”. In Musicology Today, vol. 21, 2024, pp. 3–11. https://doi.org/10.2478/muso-2024-0002
Yakymchuk, Olena. “Mythopoetics of Piano Nocturnes by Olena Ilnytska. In Harmonia: Journal of Arts Research and Education, vol. 25 (1), 2025, pp. 1–12 https://doi.org/10.15294/harmonia.v25i1.13242
Yakymchuk, Olena. “Olena Ilnytska’s choir work for children: in the intersection of domestic traditions. In Věda a perspektivy, vol. 20, no. 1, 2023, pp. 273–283. https://doi.org/10.52058/2695-1592-2023-1(20)-273-283
Yakymchuk, Olena; Rieznik, Olena. “The war topos in Ivan Nebesnyi’s works (on the example of “Message from Ukraine” and “…While recalling…”)”. In Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Musica, 70 (Special Issue 1), 2025, pp. 309–321. https://doi.org/10.24193/subbmusica.2025.spiss1.18
Yefimenko, Adelina. “Music for victory”. In ZBRUC. October 21, 2023. https://zbruc.eu/node/116754?fbclid=IwAR02kCui4X6sVfvpSp1_Q3PgSoAKwr-VB1OhNNiaekjmwVJaCiTZXIU4-gY (27.07.2025).
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Musica

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
