The traditional Ukrainian wedding ritual lasts at least a week – sometimes longer. There are some variations from region to region and village to village, but the main outline of the ritual follows the same journey. The young couple is engaged. Various wedding items are made – the wedding bread, the wreaths for the young couple, candles, icons, a decorated tree branch called a hiltse. The young couple are prepared – bathed, dressed, blessed by their families. They go to church for the wedding ceremony. After the ceremony, there is more merrymaking. The bride bids farewell to her family. The young couple begins their lives together.

These wedding festivities are filled with song. The rituals flow on the words and melodies sung by the families of the bride and groom. Most of the singers are the women of the family and they sing during all of the preparations for the ceremony, most often during the ceremony itself and during the post church service celebrations. After church, the songs take on a more, shall we say, boisterous quality. There are songs which make fun of members of the other family – very often the in-laws are referred to as “enemies” and are described as having crooked noses or runny noses or being so full of oatmeal that when they walk they leave a trail of oatmeal behind them. It is all done in good fun and with much laughter. In the wee hours of the morning, more metaphorically explicit songs are sung in which the consummation of the young couple is described and joked about. On the morning after the wedding, the bridesmaids come to the bride’s home and bring her breakfast. This meal is accompanied with stunningly heartbreaking songs of farewell. The bride is no longer a part of their community of young, unmarried girls. She’s a wife and soon-to-be mother and will have different responsibilities and a new circle of women with whom to interact.

When I was choosing the songs for the folk music portion of this concert, I contemplated focusing on one village or region. Then, I recalled a lecture given by Iryna Klymenko, a professor of folklore at the Kyiv Conservatory of Music. She spoke of a wedding where the bride was from a region in Eastern Ukraine and the groom was from the Carpathians in Western Ukraine. They wanted traditional music at their wedding – but whose music? Music from the bride’s region? The groom’s region? In the end, they chose music from both of their places of origin. It was far from traditional, yet in its own way, entirely authentic. In that spirit, I opted to program songs which come from many different regions of Ukraine.

We begin the concert with the pre-wedding series of songs. The first step is called svatannya and it is the engagement of the bride to the groom. This event would happen two to four weeks before the wedding ceremony. The bachelor, his father, and other members of his family would go to the intended’s home. Offers would be extended, jokes would be made and if the girl did indeed want to marry the young man, she would offer him scarves, and rushnyky (embroidered towels) would be tied around the representatives of the groom’s party much like a beauty pageant contestant’s sash. If the girl did not want to accept the young man’s proposal she would give him a pumpkin. Upon leaving the home, the entire village would know the outcome of that negotiation. Try looking stoic on a long walk with a pumpkin–it’s harder than you think. Once the agreement was made, wedding preparations could begin.

On the Wednesday before the wedding ceremony (weddings traditionally were held on Sunday), the homes of the young couple were prepared and decorated (most often with rushnyky/embroidered towels). The cooking would begin – especially a variety of breads. On Thursday, any animals chosen for the festivities would be slaughtered (much in the same way that any animals intended to be consumed on Easter Sunday would be slaughtered on Holy Thursday). On Friday, the oven would be greased and ingredients prepared for the korovai (the wedding bread).

On Saturday, the korovai was made. The korovai is the centerpiece of a wedding ceremony. It is a tall, round bread decorated with animals and flowers made of dough (birds, roses, periwinkle, grapes). Sometimes the korovai is also decorated with viburnum which has white flowers that develop into red berries. The viburnum is often personified in Ukrainian folklore as the “bride.” The women chosen to make the korovai had to have specific traits – they could not be widows, they needed to be mothers of healthy children, prosperous. They would pray and sing during the making of the korovai, essentially adding in their songs as one of the ingredients of this bread and imbuing it with magical qualities. The birds and flowers on the bread would symbolize prosperity and fecundity for the young couple. (During the Sunday ceremony, the young couple would bow to the korovai and walk around it three times before dividing it among the guests. Some villagers say that you are not married if there is no korovai at your wedding.) In addition to being the day on which the korovai is made, Saturday is the day to invite guests to the wedding.

The bride, dressed in traditional clothing and accompanied by her bridesmaids, would invite guests to her wedding. While this may seem like a late, last minute invitation, the village would know a wedding would be happening at least a month prior to the event because of the svatannya/engagement. Also, in many villages and regions, it was customary for the priest to announce the engagement of the young couple in church in the weeks leading up to the wedding. Saturday was also the night of Divych Vechir – the last night the bride would spend as a maiden.

On this evening, the song topics were varied. Some songs were representative of the work at hand – making the wedding wreaths for the young couple, unbraiding the bride’s hair. Some songs would depict the kind of life the young bride could expect as she would be moving into her husband’s household. Most often these songs speak of a mother-in-law not being kind like one’s own mother would be or the sadness felt by no longer living in the home she knew. Other songs would offer respect or thanks to the parents of the bride for providing for her throughout her life or would elevate the bride and groom to the status of king and queen or compare them to the sun and the moon.

On Sunday morning, the bride and groom would be ceremonially dressed and ask for blessings from their families. The procession to church was most often accompanied by peppy instrumental music provided by village musicians. The second half of the program features music which would be heard in church during the wedding ceremony and although it is not exactly folk in style, I opted to use compositions from composers who were inspired by folk traditions, along with widely known Kyivan chant versions, and pieces which use the liturgical tones.

The ceremonial segment begins with the Bohorodytse Divo as the intercession of the Virgin Theotokos
is often requested on behalf of the young couple. This rendition was composed by Yakiv Yatsynevych (1869 – 1945). Yatsynevych was a student of the renowned Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko. Before the October coup of 1917, he studied at the Sofia Theological School and the Kyiv Theological Academy, and was appointed director of the choir of St. Michael’s Golden Domed Cathedral in Kyiv. After the First World War, Yatsynevych had various jobs (teacher in a village, music teacher for amateur ensembles) and moved often before he was exiled to the Caucasus where he spent his final days.

There are two pieces by Oleksander Koshyts (1875- 1944) – his original composition of an “Alleluia”
and an arrangement of a melody from Porfiry Demutsky’s Lira. In non-Ukrainian circles, Oleksander Koshyts is best known for being the conductor of the Ukrainian National Chorus which sang Shchedryk/“Carol of the Bells” in Carnegie Hall in 1922. The Chorus was touring at the request of Ukraine’s first president, Mykhailo Khrushevsky, to share Ukrainian culture during that tenuous time before the end of the First World War. They left their homeland and while they were on tour, the Ukrainian government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks and the Chorus could not return home. They opted to continue their tour on their own. Koshyts remained in the New York area and also taught in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This “Alleluia” is from his Fourth Liturgy. The sacred chant “O Most Holy Virgin Mother” is an arrangement of a melody which Koshyts found in Porfiry Demutsky’s book The Lira and Its Motifs. The lira is an instrument similar to a hurdy-gurdy and in his 1903 publication, Demutsky wrote of the instrument’s construction as well as providing notation for folk psalms which he collected in the Kyiv region.

Kyrylo Stetsenko (1882 – 1922) came from a family of priests and spent much of his childhood singing in church choirs. He was ordained and composed much spiritual music including liturgies, vespers services, funeral services and Christmas carols. The Chesnishu performed in this concert is from his 1921 liturgy named “Folk Liturgy.”

No wedding ceremony (or any festive event for that matter) would be complete without the singing of Mnohaya lita /Many years. There are so many versions of this piece, choosing one is actually quite difficult. I was introduced to this particular Mnohaya lita by Father Deacon Daniel Galadza, deacon of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Kyiv. I was entranced by the buoyancy of the piece and thought it would be an uplifting end to the concert. When I wrote to Fr. Daniel about the work, he told me that its composer, Hannu Kononen (1949- 1998) was a Finnish composer writing music for the Eastern Orthodox Church in Finland. I was at a crossroads as to whether or not to include this work, and in the end decided to include it, but not only for musical reasons. In this time of war and destruction in Ukraine, so many Ukrainians and Ukrainian institutions are being helped by their neighbors – Poland, Romania, Slovakia – and other countries who are not their neighbors – the USA, Finland, Canada, France – to name only a few. How many Ukrainians have escaped to Finland and are singing in the Orthodox churches there? I don’t know the exact number, but I am sure there must be some. In the spirit of Finland’s support for Ukraine and in gratitude for all that has been done and continues to be done for Ukraine, I decided to keep this Mnohaya lita in this program.

—by Nadia Tarnawsky