Genre-stylistic Features of Bohdan Siuta’s “Preludes”

The scientific relevance. In contemporary realities, the Ukrainian cultural and musicological space has been developing both under the influence of the progress of globalization processes and evolving in line with the pace of national art. During the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2014–2025, society acquired a deep understanding of the value of the compositional heritage of contemporary national artists, as most of them are deeply based on the folk song heritage of our nation as much as on contemporary world artistic trends. Precisely for this reason, it is at present vital to constantly enrich the cultural and musicological environment with the works of leading contemporary Ukrainian composers, including PhD in Art Studies, Professor of the Department of Music Theory at Petro Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine, Mykola Lysenko Prize laureate, pianist Bohdan Siuta. The purpose of the article is to carry out a musicological and interpretative analysis of Bohdan Siuta’s piano preludes in order to determine the artistic and didactic value of the compositions; to consider the transformation of the genre of “preludes” in the work of the Ukrainian artist; to characterize the figurative and associative features of the “preludes” of this notable Kyivan cultural and educational figure; to consider the individual musical language and characteristic expressive means in these works. The methodology is based on the following scientific approaches: historical and cultural ones — to analyze the influence of artistic trends of the early XX century on the musical language of B. Siuta; genre and style — to consider the genre features of the compositions and reveal the transformation of this type; analytical — to carry out a musicological analysis of the Ukrainian composer’s piano preludes; interpretological — to comprehend the composer’s artistic concept and identify the peculiarities of its performing interpretation; and didactic — to argue for expanding the presence of his work both in Ukraine’s concert scene and educational process of Ukraine’s art education programs. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that for the first time the piano preludes of the Kyiv composer Bohdan Siuta are analyzed as highly artistic examples of contemporary Ukrainian music. Conclusions. The piano preludes belong to the early period of Bohdan Siuta’s work. Despite this, they clearly demonstrate a deep reliance on the modern stylistic diversity of the musical culture of the late twentieth century. The author makes extensive use of such artistic trends as avant-garde and neo-romanticism. The range of imagery and associations in the three Preludes is quite wide. These are landscape and fairy-tale themes, as well as a semantic palette of shades: from deep concentration to strong-willed dynamism. Prospects for further research are the publication of B. Siuta’s “preludes” for their widespread introduction into the modern concert and pedagogical space and their introduction into scientific circulation, which will make it possible to actualize them in the works of researchers of contemporary Ukrainian culture of the XXI century.