Ukrainian Musical Avant-Gardes in Sorbonne University, Paris. Conference and Concert
Colloquium
Ukrainian Musical Avant-Gardes: 1910 to the present
- April 24-25, 9:30 am – 6:30 pm
Campus Clignancourt, room R01
2 rue Francis de Croisset, 75018 Paris
Music written in Ukraine has a long history of engaging with the avant-garde. Beginning in the 1910s and 1920s, composers living and working within the borders of contemporary Ukraine experimented freely with all new musical movements, including expressionism, impressionism, dodecaphony, neoclassicism, and neofolklorism. Openness to all forms of innovation has, in fact, been considered a defining component of Ukrainian modernism by scholars in the fields of visual art, literature, and theatre. Despite efforts at artistic suppression within Ukraine as early as the 1930s, the experimental impulse awakened during the revolutionary period can be charted throughout Ukrainian composition of the 20th century to the present.
The artistic avant-gardes of the 1910s have long been of particular interest: their various practices, theoretical discourses, the works they produced, and their influences have been widely studied by the scholarly community. However, as with the figures of Malevich or Roslavets, the place of Ukrainian artists has often been overlooked in the historiography. Current research invites us to rethink their involvement in these movements and to explore the specificity of a Ukrainian school. Their inclusion in a revolutionary historical moment has been discussed at length and allows us to imagine links between other avant-garde moments (the 1960s, 1990s, and current movements) and revolutionary events that Ukraine has experienced in recent decades.
Read the programme here.
Organising Committee: Silvia Alvarez Baamonde (IReMus, Sorbonne Université), Esther Amant-Delnevo (Sorbonne Université), Leah Batstone (University of Vienna, Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival), Nolwenn Danhyer (Sorbonne Université), Louisa Martin-Chevalier (IReMus, Sorbonne Université), Liubov Morozova (Ukrainian Institute, Kyiv).
Scientific Committee: Leah Batstone (University of Vienna, Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival), Olga Bekenshtein (independent music curator), Jean-Marc Chouvel (IReMus, Sorbonne Université), Louisa Martin-Chevalier (IReMus, Sorbonne Université), Liubov Morozova (Ukrainian Institute, Kyiv), Myroslav Shkandrij (University of Manitoba).
This colloquium is co-organised by the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival and the Ukrainian Institute, with support from IReMus, Sorbonne Université, École doctorale ED5, Philomel, and as part of the Ukraine Program (directed by Jean-Cassien Billier).
Concert
Electric nights: Ukrainian avant-garde music of the 20th century
- April 25, 8 pm
Amphithéâtre Richelieu (old Sorbonne)
The concert presents chamber works by Ukrainian composers from 1922 to 2023. The oldest of them is the piano cycle Five Preludes by Mykola Roslavets, sometimes called the Kharkiv Preludes, because it was completed during the composer’s tenure as rector of the Music Institute in Kharkiv.
Read more about the concert here.
This concert is the result of a collaboration between Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival and the Ukrainian Institute, with the support of IReMus, Sorbonne University, the ED5 Doctoral School, Philomel, and the 1991 Project. This association promotes Ukrainian music and supports Ukrainian musicians who have sought refuge in France. This event is organised as part of the Ukraine Program (directed by Jean-Cassien Billier).