Composer’s interpretation of the female choir in the secular work by Ukrainian artists

Statement of the problem. In recent decades, female choirs have been actively involved in the cultural life of Ukraine, functioning in colleges, universities, and cultural centers. Female choirs participate in festivals, competitions, and artistic projects. The existence of highly professional female choirs in Ukraine encourages composers to write vibrant examples of choral music. An assorted and highly artistic repertoire of a choir is a guarantee of its competitiveness in the modern choral performance environment. Clear understanding a richness of the repertoire for female choirs allows a conductor to approach to the formation of the choir’s repertoire policy more analytically and individually, which highlights the relevance of this research. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The study of composers’ works for female choir is presented in the educational and methodological manual by H. Horbatenko (2015), where the author summarizes the choral works of contemporary composers from the Kyiv school. Research by scholars on the choral works of individual composers also includes analyses of certain pieces for female choir. The purpose of the article is to highlight the panorama of secular works by Ukrainian composers for female choir and to identify the patterns and divergences in the interpretation of the choir as an integral component of the compositional approach. For the first time, the works of Ukrainian composers for female choir have been comprehensively studied in this work. The methodological basis of the article is art history, historical and systemic approaches. A brief performance analysis of the works is also carried out. Results and conclusion. The article presents an overview of the secular choral music of Ukrainian composers for female choir, from Mykola Lysenko to contem-porary artists. The interest in creating music for female choir among Ukrainian composers became more prominent in the second half of the 20th century. During this period, the numerous a cappella works by Lesia Dychko, Valentyna Drobiaz’hina, Yurii Alzhnev, Hanna Havrylets, Iryna Aleksiichuk, Mykhailo Shukh, and Viktor Stepurko appeared. The composer’s interpretation of the female choir reveals a number of regularities, in particular, the dominance of the folklore basis, the tendency to the cyclical forms, the extension of the semantic and emotional spheres (appeal to philosophical content and meditative states). At the same time, the composers demonstrate an individual approach to the use of the timbre of the female choir, which is manifested in genre priorities, the peculiarities of the use of folklore primary sources (from direct quoting to the composition of original works, where they are transformed based on avant-garde techniques), the composition of instrumental accompaniment (from a cappella sound to experimental instrumental groups). In general, the specificity of the timbre of the female choir becomes a tool for composers to embody the most lyrical, transparent, sophisticated images.