Art song. The solo song with piano accompaniment is one of the most popular genres for Ukrainian composers. Mykola Lysenko wrote a wide variety of pieces for solo voice. At the turn of the 20th century, Denys Sichynsky, Kyrylo Stetsenko, Yakiv Stepovy, Pavlo Senytsia, Vasyl Barvinsky, and Stanyslav Liudkevych were notable composers of art songs. During the 20th century art songs have had a prominent place in the works of Borys Liatoshynsky, Viktor Kosenko, Yulii Meitus, Fedir Nadenenko, Heorhii Maiboroda, Anatol Kos-Anatolsky, Mykola Dremliuha, and others, even though Soviet era musical culture was not conducive to the development of such a largely Western musical genre. In the 2000s the Canadian-based Ukrainian Art Song Project launched a major effort to popularize works within this genre composed by Ukrainian composers and issued multi-CD collections of art songs by Stetsenko (2006), Lysenko (2010), Stepovy (2011), and Galicians I (Denys Sichynsky, Barvinsky, Liudkevych, and Stefaniia Turkevych-Lukiianovych) (2016), with plans for additional releases in the future.

[This article was updated in 2018.]


Encyclopedia of Ukraine