In this conversation for Polish contemporary music outlet, Yurii reflects on how he experiences his own music, how a young composer can integrate into the musical infrastructure, and the new challenges Ukrainian musicians face during the war. Author is Tetiana Novytska.
in your music, performers become co-creators, and as a result, pieces can exist in various independent interpretations?
YP: It seems to me that music is always bigger than its author. Especially since I’m still a “young composer” — most of my pieces are receiving their premieres. You write and you don’t know how it will sound live. It’s always interesting to hear your music in different interpretations.
TN: In the context of which music did your style develop?
YP: In the early years, I looked at many scores, listened to many recordings, but didn’t understand much. It was a long process: I felt that I wanted to find some “strange” texture, some strange harmony, but I didn’t know how. Even when I saw how others did it — how could I do it myself without copying anyone? It was only when I could fully grasp the essence of new techniques and use them the way I wanted that I truly made them my own. It’s like learning a foreign language.
At different times, different composers have influenced me. The classic set: Ligeti, Sciarrino, Grisey, Feldman, Xenakis, Haas… When I started analyzing Lutosławski’s scores, I gained an understanding of how to work with an orchestra. It is a living organism. Like clay being shaped into vessels as you go — Lutosławski’s orchestra seems to be a single element, an organic force that grows from within itself. And it is so refined.
With composers of earlier generations, it is easier to choose reference points — they have passed through the filter of time: the greater the historical distance, the more reliable they are. Concerts of contemporary music, on the other hand, resemble a lottery.
TN: What, for you, is a marker of musical contemporaneity? There are formal criteria, of course — music written now, in our time. But even now, one can write very different kinds of music.
YP: At the beginning of my studies at the academy, it seemed to me that contemporary music meant lots of dissonances, unpleasant sounds, molto espressivo (smiles). I remember participating, in my third year, in my first composition masterclass, “COURSE,” in Lviv. Among the participants were two composers from Turkey, one from Belarus, and among the Ukrainians — Kateryna Gryvul, who was studying in Poland at the time, Marta Haladzhun, Mykhailo Chedryk, and myself.
All of them were writing something like “vzhzhzh pshhhh phkh phkh phkhhh tttt piu piu.” They knew how to write that kind of music — I didn’t. I was the only one whose score actually contained notes. I felt like something of an ugly duckling among them. And recently I listened again to that piece of mine — it’s perfectly fine! Of course, now I can see what could be improved, but it’s entirely good. That’s how much context can affect perception.
Here’s another similar situation. During masterclasses in Warsaw, Bernhard Lang told a story that really resonated with me. He had a student in Graz from Serbia who wrote music using folk material. Lang liked his music very much and valued that individuality. A month later came the disappointment: the student brought in a score full of nothing but “khhh pshhhh chchch” — because his classmates had explained to him that this was how one is supposed to write music today.
TN: And yet compositional techniques are far from the most important factor.
YP: Viktor Domontovych — a Ukrainian modernist writer — has a phrase: “to be contemporary is precisely not to be contemporary.” When you try to hit the mainstream, you become similar to those you orient yourself toward — you end up repeating them. Contemporaneity, according to Domontovych, means turning in a different direction. In the mid-20th century, composers proclaimed the emotionlessness of music. It seems that today, emotion and sincerity are returning once again.
I think about this when I listen to contemporary composers who work with noise, with ostensibly unpleasant sounds — and yet the result is beautiful. It seems to me that the composers who proclaimed the emotionlessness of music were like explorers who burst into unknown territory and tried absolutely everything. Now, with the change of generations, a new civilization is taking shape. And in general, if there is a paradise for scores, they enter it without dates.
TN: How do you assess your own path? What changes do you see in your writing?
YP: I didn’t try to write “contemporary” music — I wrote the way I could. As my knowledge accumulated, the result was different each time. My main point of reference became elusiveness in space, textural looseness. I like how Lem describes the ocean in Solaris. In the novel, this ocean reads human consciousness. All of a sudden, various symmetriads and asymmetriads would grow within it… I would like my music to be like that too — without clear contours, with different images flowing into one another.
TN: It seems to me that for you, what matters is not so much the constant search for something new as the refinement of an already discovered musical language in each subsequent work.
YP: Lutosławski has a series of works titled Chain, where form is constructed according to the principle of a chain. I like this metaphor. That’s how I try to work: in each new piece, I take what I learned from the previous ones and try to add a new link to the chain. Sometimes it seems to me that I am writing one long work in the hope of eventually writing the perfect one.
From time to time I conduct a kind of test: I listen to one of my pieces that I was satisfied with at the time. If I am still satisfied with it, it means I haven’t changed. If I am no longer satisfied, it means I have moved to a new stage — either aesthetically or technically.
TN: How do you work with sound material in your compositions — do you make calculations, or do you rely on intuition?
YP: I use a combined method — analytical and intuitive. At first, certain numerical proportions emerge. For example, I often use the Fibonacci sequence. But each time you have to find a new way to apply them. Once the material has accumulated, I no longer follow algorithms but trust my intuition. So I usually begin by constructing the structure and finish intuitively.
TN: Do you draw diagrams?
YP: Yes, I try to. It’s good when you experience the compositional process tactilely — writing, playing, entering things into the computer. You engage with the material in different ways. Once I had to write a piece and the work simply wouldn’t move forward at all. I just drew the stage and how the performers would be positioned — and that helped me imagine what they should play.
Lately, my circumstances are such that I work only on a laptop. This affects the process — possibly not for the better. Roman Lopatynskyi, a Ukrainian pianist, brought me a gift from Berlin — a beautiful music notebook and a set of very fine pencils. And I still haven’t written anything in it. I keep postponing it, thinking: right now I don’t know what to write, but someday I definitely will.
Dzvenyslava Safian, KyivDaily, May 2025
About the premiere Be a Spiral performed by NotaBene Chamber Group:
The composition consists of five episodes. As the composer notes, “Intro introduces a certain timbral and melodic state. Intro II presents this material from a different angle — more aggressively, unexpectedly, perhaps even shockingly. In the third and most substantial part, Be a Spiral, the material unfolds in a spiral-like manner — with each repetition it ascends to a new level of formal development. The two other poles are Interludium — a moment of calm, a dramaturgical pause — and finally, Be a Point, a kind of coda.”
The piece was written specifically for the ensemble. Pikush states: “I was free in terms of techniques and approaches, since NotaBene excellently interprets both more traditional and contemporary music. There were no stylistic boundaries, and the ensemble’s versatility appealed to me — so the resulting work is exactly what I was interested in realizing and hearing.”
Zachary Senick, Ukrainian Chamber Music Encyclopedia, March 2025
About piece Protean: This is a one-movement work that is centered around the idea of taking a fragment in a calmer character in a transparent texture that develops becoming more agitated and thicker texture. The work opens with short slurred virtuosic fragments leading to a longer note value played by the flute, which are responded to by large interval staccato passages that go from duple to triple note groupings in the winds. As the passage develops the parts slowly merge together creating a new and more chaotic texture. Eventually, this section winds down ending with a texture of a repeated note changing rhythmic patterns from duple, sextuplet, and nonuplet in the harp combined with inhaling and exhaling noises in the flute. The next main section “Lento” combines the virtuosic fragments from the opening now in homorhythm creating a calmer character overtop of prepared effects in the harp and piano. As it develops the winds become more contrapuntal and add extended techniques such as glissando to explore a variety of textures and timbres in the ensemble. Next, an A tempo occurs that consists of a constant line of thirty-second notes passed around the ensemble overtop of multiphonic notes creating a thick and busy texture. Eventually, the ensemble switches to the large interval motif from the opening, while the piano continues the thirty-second note texture combining elements from earlier into this continual texture. The final section “Rubato poco rallentando” combines all of the elements and motifs throughout to create one final climax of the parts all intertwining before rhythmically and motifically aligning together cohesively to unwind resulting in the harp and piano playing a final long note that the players wait for the sound to fully disappear to conclude the work.
Seen and Heard International, 20.03.2025
Rick Perdian: ‘The last work performed was the world premiere of Yurii Pikush’s ‘Be a Cycle’, inspired by T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’. Pikush used Eliot’s depiction of desolation as the springboard for a two-part musical depiction of modern society and an individual’s quest to find a place in it. Haas led PinkNoise in a performance that focused on sound more than structure. The pointillistic textures of the first section were precise and perfect, as were the more expansive sonorities of the second which captured Pikush’s depiction of the human quest for harmony’.
Збруч, 17.10.2024
Марта Стецько: “…основним акцентом концерту мені видався твір переможця Другого Всеукраїнського композиторського конкурсу імені Мирослава Скорика Юрія Пікуша — «Terra Clastri» для клавесина і струнного оркестру — єдина світова прем’єра програми, що, крім того, провела своєрідну арку до концерту-відкриття фестивалю, на якому прозвучала інша премʼєра — але вже композитора старшого покоління, Юрія Ланюка. Та оскільки змога почути свою оркестрову музику молодим митцям досі випадає нечасто, тим значимішою стала ця подія. Зазначимо, що це не єдина цьогорічна прем’єра молодого композитора, адже кілька тижнів перед тим, на одному з найстаріших європейських фестивалів сучасної музики «Варшавська осінь» в Польщі (що з початку існування «Контрастів» був взірцем для наслідування), прозвучало симфонічне спецзамовлення автору.
У «Terra Clastri» (2024) автор вирішив поекспериментувати з поєднаннями тембрів камерного оркестру і клавішно-струнно-щипкового інструменту. Свої пошуки він описав як блукання уявною планетою Terra Cla (весин) Stri (ngs). І музика цілком відповідала назві: оркестр створював відчуття невагомості космосу, а клавесин був наче невпізнаний об’єкт, який ми, слухачі, разом досліджували у даному контексті. Навіть коли звучання струнних дещо перекривало голос клавесина — все одно було чути його характерне потріскування, яке робило музику ще специфічнішою. Було цікаво помічати й порівнювати відмінності цих тембрів: опуклого струнного та металевого клавесинного, коли оркестранти грали pizzicato, подібно до того, як це працює в механізмі клавесина”.
The Claquers, 17.10.2024
Марія Левкович: “Небезпідставно аудиторія фестивалю чекала у цей вечір премʼєр, якими й була обрамлена друга подія Маратону <…> Гра слів продовжилась і у «M’Atematics» Юрія Пікуша, який побудував свій твір на поєднанні дихання та математики його процесу”.
KyivDaily, 14.10.2024
Анна Кузик: “…посеред концерту, що продовжився пошуками мистецького осмислення дихання у творі Юрія Пікуша «M’Atematics», побудованому на контрастах акцентованих, розкиданих, ніби атоми в просторі, звуків, тріпотінні трелей, різноманітті шумових ефектів флейти”.
Dla Kultury, 16.09.2024
Paul Markuszewski: “The concert began with the world premiere of Escape Velocity by the barely 26-year-old Yurii Pikush. The piece refers to various trends in 20th-century music, from free atonality, through sonoristic explorations, to repetitive technique. It is characterized by great sound variability and excellent instrumentation”.
Szwarcman Blog, 14.09.2024
Dorota Szwarcman: “Today we heard works by three generations of contemporary artists, from the youngest to the oldest. Yuri Pikush from Dnieper, from whom the festival organizer, the Pro Musica Viva Foundation, commissioned a piece, is only 26 years old. He has already won several composition competitions and his pieces have been performed at Ukrainian contemporary music festivals, as well as last year on Uznam Island. The new work is titled Escape Velocity , which seems rather inadequate: the piece is a constant movement of changing harmonies and rhythms, but it is associated more with a rush, accelerating and slowing down, than with escape. In any case, the work is attractive and the composer (present in the audience) was very warmly received”.
Gazeta Wyborzca, 23.09.2024
Anna S. Debowska: “In Pikush’s piece, echoes of war were very audible – in the sharp entrances of trumpets and horns, in the sparingly introduced sounds of orchestral bells and a climax crowned by the blows of a large drum. The title of the piece – “Domi Res Militaris” – refers to the “war in my home” and, as the composer told “Wyborcza”, it is “a musical reflection on the events of February 2022”, i.e. Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
It is not a programmatic or epic work, describing or illustrating something. Educated partly in Ukraine, partly in the West, Pikush rather tried to recreate the moods of horror or anxious anticipation of further developments using contemporary compositional means.
He also showed sensitivity to the timbre and color of sound. This could be heard in long chords played by the strings, interrupted by the entrances of the harp and vibraphone, whose warm sound could be associated by the listener with longing for the safe atmosphere of home and childhood.
The proximity of death
However, the dry and sharp, intense pizzicato (plucking the strings in string instruments with the finger) of the violin group made a ghastly impression. To me, it reminded me of the clatter of bones, and through that of the close presence of death.
Pikush’s music had something of a soundscape in it, it was a synthesis of many subjective, strong impressions that the artist could have had at the beginning of the war. This music is so communicative and suggestive that it managed to transfer the emotional temperature of experiences full of horror to the imagination and sensitivity of the listener”.
The Claquers, 6.10.2023
Тетяна Новицька: “Кульмінацією «діалогу» того вечора став твір лауреата першої премії конкурсу Юрія Пікуша — концерт для віолончелі та оркестру «Concellastra». Його назва є грою слів, що накладаються одне на одне: з італійської заголовок перекладається буквально — «концерт для віолончелі та оркестру». Як і в опусі Ренати Сокачик, тут дуже важливу роль відіграє рух, ідея постійної змінюваності, але в цьому контексті рух не спонтанний, а напрочуд цілеспрямований, де всі елементи партитури міцно пов’язані між собою. Тож, як вчать нас закони фізики, ніщо не виникає з нічого і не йде в нікуди — тематичний розвиток твору продуманий дуже тонко.
Уся музика віолончельного концерту — суцільний пульсуючий нерв. Чи то у нестримному perpetuum mobile, чи то в коротких монологічних фразах соліста — протягом усього твору автор блискуче витримав ефект напнутої пружини. Голос соліста, що час від часу виходить на «аван-сцену» звучання, щоразу обростає контрапунктами оркестрових партій. Саме рельєфна лінеарність стає основою для створення оркестрової звукової матерії, а тим самим забезпечує постійне відчуття руху, розвитку. Способи співставлення тембрів, їхня координація у часі, філігранність кожної інструментальної звукової лінії засвідчували майстерне володіння автора оркестровим письмом. Слід віддати належне і виконавцеві партії віолончелі Артему Полуденному — в його інтерпретації кожен звук детально продуманий, у кожній фразі вибудувана чітка градація звучності — красива і переконлива”.
Журнал Музика, інтерв’ю з Марією Левкович. 21.09.2023
The Claquers, 12.10.2021, Як слухати сучасну класичну музику: Summa Tempologica Юрія Пікуша
Дзвенислава Саф’ян: “…Можливість осмислення великих конструкцій завжди цікавила митців та філософів. Так на світ з’явилась Summa theologica (Сума теології) — енциклопедична азбука католицької віри, opus magnum середньовічного схоласта Томи Аквінського. У 60-х роках XX століття польський (між іншим, народжений у Львові) футурист, філософ та фантаст Станіслав Лем за подобою попередньої назви іменував свою роботу Summa Technologiae. Номінативною алюзією обох творінь на світ явилась Summa Tempologica Юрія Пікуша.
Ідея твору також продовжила попередню композицію Summa Temporum (в перекладі — сума часів). І звісно, в усіх цих вербальних лабіринтах йдеться не про англійську граматику. Якщо в першому творі час рухався до сповільнення, то другий представляє спробу охопити суму логіки руху часів. Ще більш амбітним такий творчий прояв є завдяки невичерпності можливостей часового втілення. У задумах композитора є намір створити цикл «сум».
Але оскільки попередня робота для камерного оркестру тільки нещодавно прозвучала у виконанні Національного ансамблю «Київська камерата», чи не завадив короткий інтервал між двома творами циклу переосмисленню можливостей втілення часу? Чи вдалось, як заявлено в описі концерту, перевірити відчуття слухачів на відповідність хроносу реального і відносного?
The Claquers, 7.11.2021
The Claquers, 7.08.2020. (Не)Колисковий Фреш у Харківській Схід Опера
Ліза Сіренко: “Дещо морокувата внаслідок низьких регістрів, глісандо струнних, використання контрабасового тембру вийшла колискова у Юрія Пікуша на вірші Тетяни Островської. А тембри високих інструментів ансамблю (скрипки, флейти) додали містичності, яка відповідала і образам тексту (Примара Морана, з якою «залишишся навічно»). Однак, у цій колисковій композитор використав не лише спів, але і виразне промовляння тексту. Щоправда, від цього ставало ще моторошніше. Схожою «колисковою» вийшла Mein herz brennt (у фортепіанній версії) у Тілля Ліндеманна з Rammstein. Таке бачення пісеньки дитині розширило межі колискової в концерті у несподіваному напрямку”.
УКУ, 6.08.2021
Радіо Ісландія, 2021
