PROMOTING UKRAINIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC THROUGH ARTISTIC AND INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION: PERFORMING THE SONGS OF MYKOLA LYSENKO IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

49 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13769496 Philip Ross Bullock (University of Oxford) PROMOTING UKRAINIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC THROUGH ARTISTIC AND INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION: PERFORMING THE SONGS OF MYKOLA LYSENKO IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Abstract Філіп Рос Баллок. Популяризація української класичної музики через мистецьку та міжнародну співпрацю: виконання пісень Миколи Лисенка у Великобританії. Окреслено структурно-логічну схему популяризації української класичної музики крізь призму мистецької та міжнародної співпраці, зокрема, через виконання романсів Миколи Лисенка, а також представлено концепцію обміну знаннями. Розглянуто відповідність чисельності націй та уваги до їх культурної спадщини у контексті розвитку європейського мистецтва. Проаналізовано лекцію Томаша Гарріга Масарика. Висвітлено маргіналізацію української культури на «ментальній карті» Європи, зокрема, в літературі та музиці, та охарактеризовано ймовірні причини такого стану речей. Подано рефлексії автора, які деталізують власний досвід організації концерту української музики у Великій Британії, а також досвід колаборації з провідною мистецькою фундацією країни – Oxford Lieder. Ключові слова: М. Лисенко, Великобританія, українська класична музика, європейське мистецтво, мистецькі колаборації. As it is well known, ‗small‘ nations – and I will return to the question of the appropriateness of the epithet ‗small‘ later – have frequently deployed culture and the arts as means of accessing global networks of power and acquiring legitimacy on the world stage. Culture can not just facilitate the consolidation of a sense of national identity at home, but also the acquisition of international representation abroad, even – perhaps especially – whilst such nations lack 50 the administrative and institutional structures necessary for political self-determination. This was very much the case in the long nineteenth century, which witnessed the eventually emergence of many modern nation-states in East-Central Europe out of the framework of empire (Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Prussian, Russian). It is the process that continues today within the context of still incomplete process of decolonialisation around the world. This phenomenon has particularly been thoroughly studied in the case of literature. In The World Republic of Letters, for instance, Pascale Casanova documents how various ‗minor‘, ‗small‘ or ‗peripheral‘ literatures acquire cultural capital and legitimacy through translation into those ‗major‘ or languages that are associated with the dominant centres of the world culture. As she argues, translation can be seen in economic terms that are both real and symbolic: ‗Translation, like criticism, is a process of establishing value‘. 11 Yet the ability of translation to bestow value is often far from being a smooth or uncontested process. As Casanova suggests: Literary space is not an immutable structure, fixed once and for all in its hierarchies and power relations. But even if the unequal distribution of literary resources assures that such forms of domination will endure, it is also a source of incessant struggle, of challenges to authority and legitimacy, or rebellions, insubordination, and, ultimately, revolutions that alter the balance of literary power and rearrange existing hierarchies. In this sense, the only genuine history of literature is one that describes the revolts, assaults upon authority, manifestos, inventions of new forms and languages – all the subversions of the traditional order that, little by little, work to create literature and the literary world. 12 In Casanova‘s model, the struggles that typically define the literary sphere at a local or national level are productively projected into the international sphere. Yet for all that The World Republic of Letters has had a transformational effect on our study of the world literature and the circu11 P. Casanova. The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. Debevoise,.Cambridge, MA, and London, 2004. Р. 23. 12 Ibid. Р. 175. 51 lation of global culture, a number of its premises have come in for criticism and re-evaluation. Casanova‘s focus on the near exclusive dominance of Paris as ‗the capital of the literary world, the city endowed with the greatest literary prestige on earth‘ has frequently been questioned. 13 Indeed, Casanova herself speculates that ‗it may be that we find ourselves today in a transitional phase, passing from a world dominated by Paris to a polycentric and plural world in which London and New York, chiefly, but also to a lesser degree Rome, Barcelona, and Frankfurt, among other centres, content with Paris for hegemony. 14 Moreover, her case studies are, understandably enough, limited in geographical range and scope, focussing primarily on Ireland (Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats), Scandinavia (Georg Brandes, Henrik Ibsen), the Americas (William Faulkner, Octavio Paz), and the former Yugoslavia (Danilo Kiš). Despite her recurrent interest in the role played by Johann Gottfried von Herder in promoting the national cultures of East-Central Europe, the region itself comes in for relatively little consideration. And her resource to the discourse of ‗small‘ or ‗peripheral‘ literary cultures risks re-inscribing and even reinforcing the very power dynamics that her analysis so acutely identifies. More recently, scholars have built Casanova‘s model to analyse the ‗minor‘ European literary cultures and how they have accessed those networks of authority that serve to consecrate diverse national traditions on an international scale. In their introduction to Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations, Rajendra Chitnis and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen call for ‗a deeper understanding of how small nations variously negotiate structural constraints and opportunities‘, whilst wondering whether ‗by continually considering small-nation literatures within a dominant centre-periphery model, we run the risk of confirming the exclusivity of that very relationship and the inevitable hegemony of the centre.‘ 15 Similarly, in the same 13 Ibid. Р. 24. 14 Ibid. Р. 165. 15 R. Chitnis and J. Stougaard-Nielsen. ‗Introduction‘, in Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations, ed. R. Chitnis, J .StougaardNielsen, R. Atkin, and Z. Milutinović, Liverpool, 2020. РР. 1-8 (p. 4). 52 volume, Rhian Atkin warns that ‗with their focus on ―size‖, theoretical discussions of the translation of the literatures of European nations deemed ―small‖ risk reproducing and reinforcing the very hegemonic systems that they seek to counter.‘ 16 The vocabulary of size has an important intellectual lineage, and one – moreover – with a very particular historical resonance. On October 19, 1915 Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk held his inaugural lecture as professor of Slavonic studies at King‘s College, University of London. Here, Masaryk – who would later go on to be elected the first president of an independent Czechoslovakia in November 1918 – tackled what he referred to as ‗The Problem of Small Nations in The European Crisis‘. 17 Evoking a conceptual map of Europe, he carefully distinguished between states and nations, as well as observing important distinctions between the political situation in West and East Europe. Most crucially, however, he asked ‗what […] is the proper definition of a small and of a great nation?‘, answering his own question by stating that ‗the very notion of greatness and smallness is relative and correlative‘. 18 For Masaryk, ‗small‘ was a function of relative scale, rather than absolute size, and his analyses emerged from a hostility to the imperial framework (particularly PanGermanism) that had, as he saw it, failed to accommodate the aspirations of his homeland to national self-determination. 19 Masaryk‘s emphasis on scale as a key factor in a nation‘s size understanding because it is highly pertinent when it comes to an understanding of the place of Ukraine and its culture within Europe. 16 R Atkin, ‗Does Size Matter? Questioning Methods for the Study of ―Small‖‗, in Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations, ed. R Chitnis, J. Stougaard-Nielsen, R. Atkin, and Z. Milutinović, Liverpool, 2020. РР. 66 (p. 247). 17 T. Masaryk, The Problem of Small Nations in the European Crisis. London, 1916. 18 Ibid. Р. 17. 19 T. Masaryk, ‗Pangermanism and the Zone of Small Nations‘, New Europe, 1916, 1, 271-7. For a discussion of Masaryk‘s strategies of promoting Czechoslovak independence, see D. Ayers, ‗Masaryk and the New Europe‘, in Modernism, Internationalism and the Russian Revolution, Edinburgh, 2018. РР. 38-68. 53 With a population of over 40 million people, it is the sixth most populous country to be situated entirely on the European landmass (exceeded only by Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain), and it is the largest country in terms of area. Speakers of Ukrainian as the first or native language outnumber those of many other languages, yet in terms of the number of translations, it enjoys far less prestige than many so-called ‗minor‘ or ‗minority‘ languages. As Olesya Khromeychuk has argued, Ukraine and its culture occupy a marginal place in, or are entirely absent from, the ‗mental map‘ of Europe. 20 Masaryk gave his lecture in London more than a century ago, yet the questions he posed remain acutely topical. Kromeychuk asks whether her British readers can name ‗a ―Ukrainian Shostakovich‖, a ―Ukrainian Solzhenitsyn‖, a ―Ukrainian Akhmatova‖?‘ 21 She asks ‗where is the ‗Ukrainian Pushkin‘ after all?‘, and lists a series of a series of authors who are canonical to Ukrainian readers, yet whose status within the field of world literature is still marginal. 22 An emerging body of translations of works by these authors is likely to change this situation and will, one hopes, integrate Ukrainian literature into the ‗world republic of letters‘. But what about music in this context? How can works of Ukrainian composers be more fully incorporated into the repertoire of international performers and the listening practices of global audiences? How can Casanova‘s insights about the importance of literary translation be applied to the circulation of music in a global context? After all, the cultural histories of many of the modern nations of East-Central Europe are unthinkable without the role played by music in giving voice to the sentiments and experiences of 20 Olesya Khromeychuk. ‗Where is Ukraine‘, RSA Journal, 2002, 2. РР. 27– 31. 21 Ibid. Р 27. 22 Ibid. Р. 27. Kromeychuk‘s list is as follows: ‗Taras Shevchenko. Lesia Ukrainka. Ivan Franko. Olha Kobylianska. Maik Iohansen. Mykola Kulish. Vasyl Stus. Lina Kostenko. Oksana Zabuzhko. Boris Khersonskyi. Serhy Zhadan. Olena Stiazhkina. Iryna Shuvalova‘ (ibid., p. 27). 54 their peoples, especially when those people were subsumed under imperial administration and even domination. The names are familiar enough – Jean Sibelius in Finland, Fryderyk Chopin in Poland, Antonín Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana in Bohemia, Leoš Janáček in Moravia, George Enescu in Romania. What lessons can be learned from these cases when considering the life and work of Mykola Lysenko, how are we to understand his place in the emergence of Ukrainian national music? My suggestions here are more practical rather than conceptual, and are related to the specific case of academic research in the United Kingdom at present. Many of my thoughts will seem potentially parochial, and are not offered as a universal strategy for emulation, but rather as a case study based on my own personal experiences. An important aspect of British academic life is a regular exercise which is designed to assess the quality of our publications, scholarship and research. It is now called the Research Excellence Framework and has taken place every few years since 1986, when it was introduced by the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. Since then, it has occurred in 1989, 1992, 1996, 2001, 2008, 2014, and 2021. 23 In its present form, it allocated grades to published scholarship (what are called ―outputs‖), currently on the following basis: 4*: Quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour 3*: Quality that is internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour but which nonetheless falls short of the highest standards of excellence 2*: Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour 1*: Quality that is recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour On the basis of these grades, departments receive more or less government funding in proportion to their performance. Departments 23 The results of the most recent exercise can be consulted at: https: // www.ref.ac.uk/ (accessed 28 November 2022). 55 often grow if they are seen to be successful – or they risk being shrunk or even closed entirely if they perform poorly. As you might imagine, many people are critical of this exercise, as it is costly, time-consuming, and bureaucratic, is felt to impose restrictions on academic freedom, and represents the introduction of a neoliberal business model into university life. Recently, there have been some changes in how this exercise works. Not only are scholarly publications graded, but other aspects of academic life are assessed too. Subjects are awarded grades for what is called the ‗research environment‘ – the number of graduate students, the amount of grant income, and so forth. And grades are also awarded for what is called ‗impact‘. This is defined as follows: ‗an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia.‘ 24 The grades awarded for ‗outputs‘, ‗environment‘, and ‗impact‘ are linked to our government funding, in the following proportions: Outputs (60%); Impact (25%); and Environment (15%). For scholars working in areas of ‗pure‘ scholarship, whether in the humanities or the sciences, it can be very hard to demonstrate impact in this way. However, in other ways, ‗impact‘ has had some potentially positive consequences for the humanities, because in certain cases, the wider importance of scholarship within society and culture can be very clearly demonstrated. This is especially the case for scholars in the performing and fine arts – in history of art, in theatre and drama, in music. In the field of literature and modern languages, it has also raised the profile of translation as a crucial aspect of scholarship and research. As a result, academics are able to devote themselves not just to the traditional genres of monographs, edited collections, journal articles and book chapters, but also to collaborations with theatres, orchestras, concert organisations, and so forth. The introduction of impact as a criteria for the assessment of research quality encourages scholars to write not just for their academic colleagues, but for the broader general public and for 24 https: // www.ref.ac.uk/guidance-on-results/impact-case-study-databasefaqs/ (accessed 28 November 2022) 56 practitioners in their respective fields. It is something that graduate students and postdoctoral students are increasingly interested in, and it an additional criterion when hiring new members of teaching and research staff. Further administrative developments in UK academic life have added to this picture. As a result of the inclusion of impact in the assessment of research excellence and allocation of financial resources, a number of other policies have been developed. The first of these is Public Engagement with Research, described by one body as: the myriad of ways in which the activity and benefits of higher education and research can be shared with the public. Engagement is by definition a two-way process, involving interaction and listening, with the goal of generating mutual benefit. 25 Another body refers to it as: the many ways that members of the public can be involved in the design, conduct and dissemination of research. Highquality engagement is a two-way process with the goal of generating mutual benefit between the public and researchers and ultimately enhancing the quality or impact of research. 26 So, Public Engagement with Research is a mutual process – it is not just scholars communicating their research to the public, but it is working with general audiences to shape the research question and research methods. Another related term should also be added – Knowledge Exchange, which according to one definition, is: the mutually beneficial sharing of ideas, data, experience, and expertise, and involves collaboration between researchers and external organisations or the public. There are many potential pathways and outcomes from this reciprocity that demonstrate 25 https: // www.publicengagement.ac.uk/about-engagement/what-publicengagement (accessed 28 November). 26 https: // www.ox.ac.uk/research/using-research-engage/publicengagement/why-engage (accessed 28 November 2022). 57 both the enhancement of academic research and the benefits to society and the economy. Knowledge Exchange is a reciprocal act which helps both parties, and has both tangible and intangible outcomes. 27 Knowledge Exchange has certain features in common with Public Engagement with Research, yet it also slightly different, as it emphasises the importance of collaboration with non-university organisations, who help shape research and scholarship in new ways. All of these factors constitute a major change in academic life in the United Kingdom, yet one positive outcome of this political agenda has been increased emphasis on and recognition of new ways of working that go beyond the traditional genres of academic scholarship. Collaborations with external organisations and activities with non-specialist audiences can now be seen as integral to the professional activities of university staff. In my own case, this allows me to devote more time to my work with arts and cultural organisations around the UK and abroad, such as the Royal Opera House, Welsh National Opera, Garsington Opera, Opera Holland Park, Oxford Lieder, and Wigmore Hall in the United Kingdom, or Stuttgart opera, the Wiener Staatsoper, the Salzburg Festival, and Bard Music Festival abroad. 28 So how might such developments be relevant to the study of ‗Mykola Lysenko in the Context of World Culture‘? At present, despite growing interest in all aspects of Ukrainian society and culture, foreign readers often have insufficient access to Ukrainian literature in translation, there is a relative lack of scholarly yet accessible accounts of important figures in Ukrainian music and painting, and crucial aspects of Ukrainian history and society are still unfamiliar to many members of the general public. Scholars can naturally address this situation through publications and research, yet the question remains of how best to disseminate this work to a 27 https: // www.torch.ox.ac.uk/knowledge-exchange-policy (accessed 28 November 2022). 28 For a list of such activities, see https: // www.creativeml.ox.ac.uk/blog/exploring-multilingualism/ confessionsprogramme-note-writer/index.html (accessed 28 November 2022). 64 which sets his Ukrainian identity in an explicitly comparative context, has the potential to offer a productive perspective from which to view both his particularly legacy, and the Ukrainian musical heritage more broadly. References 1. Atkin R. Does Size Matter? Questioning Methods for the Study of ―Small‖, in Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations, ed. R. Chitnis, J. Stougaard-Nielsen, R. Atkin, and Z. Milutinović. Liverpool, 2020. РР. 247–66. 2. Ayers D. Masaryk and the New Europe, in Modernism, Internationalism and the Russian Revolution, Edinburgh, 2018. РР. 38–68. 3. Biti V. (ed.), Reexamining the National-Philological Legacy: Quest for a New Paradigm?. Amsterdam and New York, 2014. 4. Casanova P. The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. Debevoise. Cambridge, MA, 2004. 5. Chitnis R. and Stougaard-Nielsen J. Introduction in Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations, ed. R. Chitnis, J. StougaardNielsen, R. Atkin, and Z. Milutinović. Liverpool, 2020. РР. 1–8. 6. Cornis-Pope M. and Neubauer J. General Introduction in History of the Literature Cultures of East-Central Europe, ed. Marcel CornisPope and John Neubauer, 4 vols. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2004– 10. Vol. 1. РР. 1–18. 7. Emerson C. Answering for Central and Eastern Europe in Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, ed. H Saussy, Baltimore, 2006. РР. 203–11. 8. Hutcheon L. Rethinking the National Model in Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on Theory, ed. Linda Hutcheon and Mario J. Valdés. Oxford and New York, 2002. РР. 3-49. 9. Khromeychuk O. Where is Ukraine. RSA Journal. 2002, 2. РР. 27–31. 10. Masaryk T. Pangermanism and the Zone of Small Nations. New Europe. 1916, 1. РР. 271–7. 11. Masaryk T. The Problem of Small Nations in the European Crisis. London, 1916. 12. Tihanov G, Do ―Minor Literatures‖ Still Exist? The Fortunes of a Concept in the Changing Frameworks of Literary History in Reexamining the National-Philological Legacy: Quest for a New 65 Paradigm?, ed. V Biti, Amsterdam and New York, 2014. РР. 169– 190. 13. Trumpener L. World Music, World Literature: A Geopolitical View in Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, ed. H Saussy, Baltimore, 2006. РР. 185–202. 14. https: // www.creativeml.ox.ac.uk/blog/exploring-multilingualism/ confessions-programme-note-writer/index.html 15. https: // www.ox.ac.uk/research/using-research-engage/publicengagement/ why-engage 16. https: // www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/ 17. https: // www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/event/1446 18. https: // www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/event/1388 19. https: // www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/news/rps-award 20. https: // www.publicengagement.ac.uk/about-engagement/whatpubliceng agement 21. https: // www.ref.ac.uk/ 22. https: // www.ref.ac.uk/guidance-on-results/impact-case-study-databasefaqs/ 23. https: // www.torch.ox.ac.uk/knowledge-exchange-policy 24. https: // www.ukrainianartsong.ca/