Jacy Pedersen: Identity and Nostalgia in Stefania Turkevych’s “Emigration Elegy”

Use of song as an expression of national identity and the desire for independence from foreign powers permeates Ukrainian history. Poet and First Vice-President of the Ukrainian Cultural Fund Victor Boiko describes the more than 200,000 documented Ukrainian folk songs, ranging from religious and ritual songs to historic and political songs, as a “generational encyclopedia of the Ukrainian experience.” Throughout her career Stefania Turkevych drew from the Ukrainian folk song tradition, composing works which included folk songs as themes or composing original melodies with foundations in folk tradition. Especially emblematic of her style, the fusion of folk and expressionist elements stands firmly opposite of the music permitted by the Doctrine of Socialist Realism. The inclusion of text in her songs—in some cases by poets with a strong political views, either towards Ukrainian national identity or feminism—clearly expresses Turkevych’s positive-bent rebellion against the trends of historiography and Ukrainian erasure due to the Russian grand narrative. In her song “Emigration Elegy,” Stefania Turkevych expresses Ukrainian national identity and nostalgia through text-painting, a folksong-like melody over non-tonal triadic harmony, and harmonic/melodic disconnection within hybrid phrase structures. Drawing upon the work of William Caplin, Joseph Straus, Joti Rockwell, and Svetlana Boym, I argue Turkevych’s style of juxtaposing twentieth-century and folk musical techniques, use of Ukrainian language, and frequent target audience of Ukrainian émigrés expresses nostalgia and national identity in ways which actively push against historical and twentieth-century efforts to eliminate it.

Jacy Pedersen is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Wichita State University. She received her Ph.D. in music theory from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 2023. Her primary research focuses on acts of rebellion through music composed by women in the Soviet Union. Her work often uses an interdisciplinary methodology which combines music theory with gender studies, literary theory, analysis of drama, and Slavic studies. Additionally specializing in the study of film and video game music, she has presented her research at conferences nationally and internationally, including the International Musicological Society, the Society for Music Theory, the North American Conference on Video Game Music, and Music and the Moving Image.

Jacy Pedersen: Identity and Nostalgia in Stefania Turkevych’s “Emigration Elegy”

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