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Professor Vasyl Yavtuhovych Herasymenko, music teacher at the Lviv Conservatory, has been known as one of the foremost innovative Bandura designers and engineers in Ukraine. He was born in 1927 in the Kyiv region. During his childhood years his mother and brothers passed on their love of singing to Vasyl. He remembers being particularly moved by an old kobzar who performed in his village with a group of artists from the Kyiv Philharmonic. That kobzar's rendition of a historical song about Morozenko (Ukrainian national hero) has stayed with him throughout his life, Professor Herasymenko recalls. In 1948, while visiting his older brother in the city of Boryslav, Lviv region, the young Vasyl so impressed some of his brother's friends with his singing, that they signed him up at the Drohobych Music School. A short time later he transferred to a music school in Lviv, where he first started studying bandrua. To improve his financial situation, he also worked at a puppet theater. There, they noticed that he had considerable drawing abilities. He tried to enter the Institute of Applied Arts, but it was a month too late for the entry and instead he decided to continue to study music.

In parallel with his studies, he began to translate some works of piano literature for bandura. He also successfully began performing with students at concerts.

In 1954 (an unprecedented case), a student with two years of teaching experience, was invited to work at the Lviv Conservatory named after Lysenko.

He had to deal with everything at once: work with students, continue his studies, take care of the repertoire for both, himself and for the students. As soon as he graduated from the conservatory, Vasyl Herasymenko wanted to continue singing. In a few more years, he translated a large number of instrumental music and songs for bandura. But despite all the efforts of the young teacher, the overall level of students' performance on the bandura was low. Saving the situation, he organized an amateur ensemble of bandurists. At the same time, he was active as a bandurist soloist and continued his studies at the Conservatory named after Lysenko.

It was then he decided to try to make banduras. And in 1950, he finished the bandura using the traditional method of tapping sycamore. It was made like the models that existed at the time: small in size, with diatonic basses, a two-octave tuning range, chromatic tuning. At that time it was a lifesaver. There was no industrial production of banduras in Ukraine at that time, and it was almost impossible to find one to buy.

The first attempt at making bandura instilled in Herasymenko faith and hope in his mastery abilities. He made the next two banduras from willow, because at that time it was very difficult to find sycamore.

When making the first instruments, Vasyl copied old samples. Those banduras had dull sound. Then Lviv master professor Vasyl Herasymenko realized that a new and improved model was needed, and he immediately started working on it. He went to Kyiv, where he met Ivan Sklyar, who was engaged in the improvement of banduras and invented a switch roller, which made it possible to rearrange diatonic scales into the required tonality. Such a bandura is called concert bandura or with switches and it appeared in Ukraine in Chernihiv in 1948. Sklyar's bandura was dominant for a long time, but much heavier than usual. Because now the vast majority of bandurists were females, it very soon became unpopular because of its weight.

Using the basic premise of switches for tonalities from another Bandura master Ivan Sklar, Professor Herasymenko designed a new Bandura with a more rounded body, giving greater acoustical sound. The Lviv concert Bandura is currently the most favored instrument of leading bandurists in Ukraine, some of whom, including Halyna Menkush and Ostap Stakhiv, have recently toured the USA. He was an extremely organized, accurate and detail-oriented individual. When he had worked or taught, he had aimed to streamline and improve all processes. He was teaching at the Conservatory, he continued to dedicate his time to creating the ultimate Bandura design until he retired at the age 85 y/o. He created an instrument which excelled in every possible aspect of the Bandura art form. Herasymenko developed an ingenious mechanism which rapidly and easily retuned the instrument.

The talented master made all his instruments in the evening and at night, because he had to go to the conservatory, where he was teaching during the day. In the evening he would allow his little helper, daughter Adriana to stay late with him in the kitchen of their small apartment and watch him  making drafts, sketches and bandura parts. Later on, after a troublesome and long wait, the city government gave Vasyl a small room in the basement of their 5-story building where in cold, damp space he could make his workshop and continue to develop the instrument.

Maybe he would have become a concert singer, if not for one more unexpected turn of fate. Banduras of his design are beginning to be introduced into mass production at the Lviv Musical Instrument Factory. The concert career of the singer remains in dreams, and cruel reality leads the talented master through the seven circles of hell in overcoming all official and semi-official obstacles to the introduction and production of a new type of bandura. Once again, it is necessary to combine the incompatible: intense pedagogical work in the conservatory and the hard work of a designer. There are, of course, no normal conditions for this, so new improved banduras arise in a poorly adapted semi-basement room, next door to rats. But love for bandura overcomes all difficulties. And so it is the only one that allows the Master to withstand all the tests and stubbornly hold his own for over fifty years.

Continual serial manufacture of banduras was set up in 1964. Vasyl Herasymenko developed an acceptable model instrument and also developed a serial process for the mass production of banduras.

From 1964-68 some 300 experimental instruments were produced by the "Trembita" Musical Instrument Factory in Lviv. These instruments became known as the "Lviviankas". The first models had 58 strings which included 17 bass strings. This particular instrument differed from counterparts made at the Chernihiv Musical Instruments Factory in that the body of the instrument was made of bent glued sections like that of a mandolin, rather than hewn out of a solid piece. These glued sections were made out of curly maple rather than the more traditional willow. This change was because the willow used for the backs of the hewn banduras was not a commercial material and was difficult to obtain.

Children's sizes were later also developed by Vasyl Herasymenko and a series of these instruments were also manufactured at this time.

Later further refinements meant that a 15 bass instrument was developed having the same range. This new instrument eradicated many of the minor defects which appeared in the previous models.

Looking at the Professor Herasymenko's work, one can't stop wondering where this modest person got so much strength, energy, patience, and time to clearly perform such a wide variety of works, both creative and practical. It is difficult to name a bandura player who, like Herasymenko, could so skillfully combine the areas of development of Kobzar art in one person. Herasymenko passed on his love for bandura to his children Ola and Oksana and his artistic abilities to his daughter Adriana. He raised his daughters not only with words, but also with songs and love for instrument, music and art. More than once, Olga and Oksana sang songs sonorously accompanied by their father. Therefore, it is not surprising that now they are beautiful bandurists who took their father's talent and love for the folk instrument.

The Herasymenko's family is very famous in Ukraine and abroad. It was his daughters who made a great legacy of bandura music and began to revive bandura art following the footsteps of their father.

Vasyl Herasymenko left a lot to remember and many remember him with joy, love and honor. His pedagogical work as a professor, long-time head of the department of Ukrainian folk instruments of the Lviv State Conservatory named after Lysenko (since 2000 - Lviv State Academy of Music named after M. Lysenko), produced hundreds of top-class singers and bandura performers, including 20 laureates of various competitions, candidates of sciences, outstanding figures of native culture, awarded with honorary titles. Not many in Ukraine would be able not only to surpass that, but even simply to repeat it.

But it is much more important that his students promote the Ukrainian song and the magical sound of the bandura, renewed by him, in the most remote corners: after all, the names of Nina and Danyila Baiko, Ludmila Posikira, Galina Menkush, the trio of Oksana Herasymenko, Ola Herasymenko have been heard not only in the Ukraine, but also in the whole world and Olga Voytovych, Ostap Stakhiv, Oksana Savytska, Taras Lazurkevych, Oleg Sozanskyi... The family of laureates - pupils of the Master - is constantly being replenished, each time new names shine in the sky of the Ukrainian Bandura school thanks to his pedagogical talent.

Besides the technical inventions for the improvement and re-birth of Kharkiv model bandura, Vasyl created a modern repertoire for this amazing instrument, based on the heart of the Ukraine - folk music. Herasymenko simply has no equal in the country. He produced 22 different models of banduras (5 of which are accepted for industrial production); three collections of musical works translated for bandura and an ensemble of bandura players were published by the publishing house "Muzychna Ukraina." More than 350 handwritten musical works are constantly used as educational and concert repertoire by his followers.

Herasymenko's banduras travelled the world and proved that this original instrument in the hands of a true master can outgrow narrowly regional "ethnographic exoticism" and be perceived in all the richness of timbre overflows, which are close to the trembling sound of an ancient harpsichord.

Full-sounding and strong, almost like a violin... a historical parallel arises involuntarily: the ancient harpsichord and all its varieties could not cover all tonalities for a long time, and it took several centuries until the tempered piano was invented. What the Italian Bartolomeo Cristofori did for the piano, the Ukrainian master and artist Vasyl Herasymenko discovered and improved for the bandura - he perfected the instrument's ability to operate with the entire chromatic palette of sounds. A master, a teacher, a performer, a composer - the author of transcriptions... Are there not too many roles for one person? But only at first glance, these types of activities exist in parallel in Vasyl Herasymenko's life. In fact, all of them are subordinated to one - a single high spiritual goal: to prove the relevance, modernity, artistic completeness of bandura in the context of today's artistic existence, not to allow it to settle in museums as a historical relic, interesting only to a narrow group of specialists. He did not reach his goal easily, and not immediately, but after experiencing pain, disappointment, doubt, and only in this crucible of experiences the main line of life matured and hardened. And, probably, following the author of the immortal Kobzar, Herasymenko could repeat the famous words "I am punished, I suffer, but I do not repent."

Vasyl Herasymenko left a priceless inheritance, a living piece of art, culture and history for all Ukrainian people.

Author: Adriana Vasylivna Herasymenko

Vasyl Herasymenko on Ukrainian Wikipedia