Ukrainian folk music

Folk music in Ukraine has rich cultural traditions and it has always played a big role in the lives of Ukrainian people. It helped to show truthfully their joys and sorrows, peculiarities of their customs and traditions, their outlook and everyday life. Ritual songs, ballads and historical songs (dumy) may be sung a cappella or accompanied by folk instruments, of which the multistringed bandura is the most popular. Ukrainian church choral music reached its peak in the works of the 19th century composers Maksym Berezovsky, Dmytro Bortnyansky and Artem Vedel. The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries witnessed the birth of the best Ukrainian operas «Zaporozhets za Dunayem» («A Cossack Beyond the Danube») by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky, «Katerina» by Mykola Arkas, «Natalka Poltavka», «Utoplena» (The Drowned Girl»), and «Taras Bulba» by Mykola Lysenko, compositions of Petro Nishchynsky and Mykhaylo Verbytsky, Kyrylo Stetsenko and Mykola Leontovich. In the middle of the 20th century the most talented and popular Ukrainian composers were Lev Revutsky, Boris Lyatoshinsky, Stanislav Lyudkevych, Kostyantin Dankevich, Yuly Meytus, Yury and Platon Mayboroda.

Ukraine has six opera theatres, numerous symphony orchestras, academic and folk choirs, and other performing ensembles. Amateur groups of song and dance are very popular. The Ukrainian folk song is a real miracle. It contains great power in it. The song is the voice of the people's soul, the poetic expression of their hardworking and musical nature, the figurative embodiment of their history, morality, dreams and desires. The song accompanied our Cossacks in heroic marches and in Turkish captivity, in the funeral feast and near the chumack campfire under bright stars in the sky. The song was always our mother-caretaker who stood on the guard of our sacred sources. We have songs of various genre: cradle (lullaby) songs, spring songs, funeral songs Cossack and chumack songs, wedding songs, etc.

Special praise should be given to Ukrainian folk love songs that unite beautiful melodies with poetic lyrics. These songs may be sad and heart-touching, about the lost love or parting with the beloved, or they may be jolly and vigorous tempting you to dance with the music. A lot of Ukrainian folk songs are extremely popular nowadays, sung and loved by millions of people both in Ukraine and beyond its borders.

Ex.2. Correct the following sentences according to the information given in the text.

1. People of Ukraine don't show much interest in their folk music.

2. Ritual songs, dumy and ballads became very popular in the XIXth century.

3. Turkish warriors also learnt Ukrainian songs.

4. There are only three known genres of Ukrainian songs - ritual songs, dumy and ballads.

5. You can hardly hear Ukrainian operas because composers in Ukraine wrote few of them.

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