Every nation has its sacred symbols embodying its distinctive character and national unity.
The symbols are aimed to elevate spirit of the masses in their struggle for freedom, for their own independent state. Besides flag and coat of arms, these symbols include anthem.
Anthems has an old story, their initiation refers to choral prayers appealing to gods in the ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece. During the Christian time, especially in the East Byzantium ceremony, religious anthems had become a part of divine service. In Ukraine — Rus of the prince's time they served invocatory war cries. The widely known Cossack marching songs, 'Cossacks Have Stood Up for the World', 'Hey Good People, Do Not Be Surprised', and 'Hey the Reapers Are Reaping on the Hill', possess features of the invocatory anthems.
Partition of the Ukrainian ethnic lands in the late 18th century between the Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire brought in certain differences in the state of the Ukrainian anthem creative process. Rigorous censorial oppression from the side of the Russian Tsarist power, a ban to use the Ukrainian language made its development hardly possible. On the outskirts of the Austrian state with social processes being somewhat slower there, a series of the Ukrainian patriotic songs which performed a function of anthems had come out.
The most famous among these songs, Peace with You, Brothers after poem by I Hushalevych, was created
on a wave of the revolutionary upsurge prompted by 'the spring of the peoples' — the revolutionary events of 1848 — 1849. Such works were of a limited, local significance and in time they lost their urgency.
The song Ukraine's Glory Has Not Yet Perished has become a real all-Ukrainian — and later on the national — anthem. Its authors, a poet Pavlo Chubynskyi and a composer Mykhailo Verbytskyi, represent two different branches of the Ukrainian people — Western and Eastern.
The author of the lyrics Pavlo Chubynskyi (1839 — 1884), a famous ethnographer and writer, was born in a farm-stead near Boryspil (Kyiv province). After finishing a Kyiv high school, he entered Petersburg University and in 1861 graduated from the University. In his youth Chubynskyi took a keen interest in studies of the folk life and customs and began to record folk songs. In addition, he rushed to a vortex of social life marked in the sixties of 19th century with impetuous revolutionary events in Russia, a development of the Polish uprising, and the awakening of the Ukrainian national liberation movement going in parallel.
Under influence of the revolutionary environment in 1862 Chubynskyi wrote a poem Ukraine's Glory Has Not Yet Perished with a clear powerful appeal to the struggle for freedom and independence. For sympathizing with the liberation competition the Tsarist government exiled the poet to Arkhangelsk province. There he stayed until 1869. All the time Chubynskyi pursued intensive research in ethnography. He became
a full member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society; he leaded an expedition organized in 1869 — 1870 aimed at collecting ethnographic and statistical materials in the marginal Ukrainian provinces.
These materials were published under the title of The Works of the Ethnographic and Statistical Expedition to the Western Russian Region in 1872 - 1879 in seven volumes in Petersburg. Upon initiative of Chubynskyi the first one-day census of Kyiv residents was effected on 2 March 1874. Scientists highly appraised ethnographic works of their colleague. Chubynskyi got multiple honorary awards; in particular in 1875 he was awarded with a gold medal of the International Ethnographic Congress in Paris.
Pavlo Chubynskyi was an active participant of the Ukrainian democratic liberation movement and association 'Hromada' (The Community) which had united nationally mature representatives of the Ukrainian elite. Due to the amplified attack of the Russian chauvinistic forces (Yemesk Decree of 1876) he was forced by the Tsarist government to leave Ukraine and to move to Petersburg. There he fell ill. Friends managed to get a permit for him to return to the homeland. Shortly after return he died, it happened just one day before his 45th birthday.
The poem Ukraine's Glory Has Not Yet Perished by P Chubynskyi was published for the first time without author's name in the fourth issue of a Lviv literary and political bulletin 'Meta' (The Goal) in 1863. Since the poem prefaced a selection of
poems by Taras Shevchenko, for a long time the community attributed it to the Great Kobzar.
As a song-anthem Ukraine's Glory Has Not Yet Perished got into life along with music by Mykhailo Verbytskyi (1815 — 1870) who was a modest priest in a poor near-Carpathian village and at the same time a talented creative personality, one of the initiators of the Ukrainian national composer school.
Mykhailo Verbytskyi was born in the village of Yavirnyk Ruskyi located near Peremyshl, a 'western bastion' of the ethnic Ukrainian lands (nowadays within Poland). He was left an orphan in the early age and a Peremyshl bishop Ivan Snigurskyi became his guardian. In Peremyshl being an important centre of the Ukrainian cultural and spiritual life Verbytskyi acquired his first musical knowledge from a cathedral chorus and a music school organized by the cathedral; the training with a specialty Czech musician Alois Nanke and then with an experienced organist, a theoretic and composer Franc Lorenc added to his knowledge.
However in his subsequent life he followed a way ordinary for representatives of the Ukrainian Galych intellectuals — he entered the Lviv Greek Catholic Theological Seminary. But even there, thanks to a great role attributed to the choral singing in the East Byzantine church ritual, the young man remained linked with music and became a leader of ardent propagandists of polyphony, especially compositions of Dmytro Bortnianskyi.
Continuation
Pages 1.
2.
Information is taken
scientifically - popular edition "National Anthem of
Ukraine", popular historical essay. Statutory broker of
television and broadcast of Ukraine let out on the order on
the program the "Ukrainian book"
The author of text is
Maria Peter Zagaykevich.
Materials, publications and researches used for drafting of
essay:
1. Paul
Chubinskiy. "Ukraine did not yet die" / Manager and comments
of the Feodor Pogrebennick. — B.: "Oberegi", 1991.
2. Pogrebennick
Feodor. "Yet to us, brothers of yong, a fate will smile".
Heroic and tragic history of hymn. Manuscript. — b., 1993.
3. Trembickiy
Vladimir. National hymn Ukraine did not "Yet die..." but
other Ukrainian to the hymn of song. Second the complemented
edition is done. it is Lvov: ÍÒØ, 2003.
4. Cheridnichenko
Dmitry. Paul Chubinskyi. it is the B.: Publishing house of
"Alternative", 2005.
5. Zagaykevich
Maria. Michael Verbickiy. Pages of life and creation. it is
Lvov: "Missionary", 1998.
6. Zelinskiy
Alexander. To the release of hymn Ukraine" did not "Yet die
in old manuscripts and original sources of // Musica
Galiciana, ò. 6, ñ. 257-307. is Lvov, 2001.
7. Zelinskiy Alexander. Origins and first steps of
life of national hymn Ukraine" did not "Yet die // the issue
of the day of domestic policy. — b., 2004 ¹4, ñ 11-27.
