← Ukrainian Composer Database

Vitaliy Hodziatsky

b. 1936 · Ukraine

Vitaliy Hodziatsky, composer

Vitaliy Hodziatsky (b. December 29, 1936) was born into a musical family and trained privately before enrolling at the Kyiv Conservatory in 1956 as a composition student of Borys Liatoshynsky, graduating in 1961. He taught at Vinnytsia Music College from 1961–1963, where he organized the Stravinsky Club for students and teachers to study recordings of modern Western music, and later worked in Kyiv music schools and at the Dovzhenko Film Studio. He joined the Union of Composers in 1969, was expelled roughly eighteen months later alongside Valentyn Sylvestrov, and was reinstated in 1974 following intervention by prominent Soviet composers.

ChoralSpiritual music

Awards

  • Honored Artist of Ukraine
  • Laureate, Borys Liatoshynsky Prize

Performed at UCMF

Surface Ruptures

UCMF 2021 · The Kyiv Avant-Garde · Mar 6 · 1963 · Piano

solo piano (Rozryvy ploshchyn), secretly premiered in 1967

Performed by Anna Shelest (Piano)

According to the composer, the piece is a sonic allegory of cosmological processes of the Universe. Godziatsky relates the acoustic energy of his music to the ideas of quantum physics, which inspired many composers and philosophers in Europe in the 1950s–1960s, including Iannis Xenakis and Umberto Eco. The title — Rozryvy ploshchyn — has been translated into English in at least five different ways and means ruptures of colliding geometrical planes. The pointillistic texture of the piece, as well as sudden dynamic shifts and registral leaps were likely inspired by the music of Anton Webern. This work departs most severely from socialist realist norms and was obviously too avant-garde for Soviet bureaucrats. It could not be performed in Kyiv in the 1960s and was secretly premiered by the major champion of avant-garde music in the Soviet Union, Alexei Lyubimov, on April 12, 1967 at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. Rozryvy ploshchyn received positive feedback from Pierre Boulez, who heard the recording later in 1967.

Watch on YouTube ↗

Open in the interactive database →