'Mid-Century Nonconformists' with Peter Schmelz | Muzyka 2026

This class introduces and examines the leading Ukrainian composers from the generation of the sixties—the Shistdesiatniki—among them such figures from the Kyiv avant-garde as Valentyn Sylvestrov, Leonid Hrabovsky, and Volodomy Zahortsev, as well as Myroslav Skoryk and Yevhen Stankovych. We will look at the transformational role these creators and their music played in contesting socialist realism and its Russo-Soviet conceptions of both form and content. Concentrating on compositions such as Sylvestrov’s Symphony no. 3, ‘Eschatophony’, and Misteriya, Hrabovsky’s Concerto Misterioso, as well as Skoryk’s soundtrack to Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Tini zabutykh predkiv, 1965), we will consider the intersections of this music with film, the visual arts, literature, and folklore. Broader themes include avant-gardeness and Ukrainianness, resistance and self-definition, identity and belonging.