I am one of very few students of the piano master Lubomyr Melnyk. On the left, there - that's us, the first time I had the pleasure of meeting him in person. This is my (new, work-in-progress) website where I will be sharing what I have learned, my experience as a student and my resources. The continuous music of Lubomyr Melnyk is beautiful and unique, but it is in danger of dying and there is almost nothing out there to help a potential student: I want to use my privileged, unique position to change that.
Please, support and listen to Lubomyr's music - help us to find students - and please consider supporting my YouTube channel, which serves a very similar purpose to this website. Lubomyr's current official website is here. When complete, I hope for the Lessons and Essais to be of most use for a student of Lubomyr's music.
The purpose is not to put the music (or Lubomyr) on a pedestal; it just needs to be heard, and kept alive for future generations. This is all I ask.
Continuous music is a genre of music, and much more besides. The purpose of this site is to elaborate on what it is, and what it is not; to collect some of its history, pieces, scores and texts; and to provide a repository of knowledge that a student could benefit from.
On your left you may find an example piece, but within itself continuous music has a great variety of sounds and flavours. It is also a philosophy, a technique and a way of thinking and feeling - a mode of existing at the piano. It was discovered, and has been solely professionally developed, by Lubomyr Melnyk. We believe it is neither better nor worse than any conventional piano music - Lubomyr bows very humbly before Beethoven et al. - just simply different; it is very different, and unfortunately the bulk of the difference is understood only by the performer. This has invited a lot of arrogance from the casual onlooker, but if you really listen to, and dwell on, this music with an open mind, you ought to realise you have never heard anything like it before (though, it is greatly diminished once recorded). If the world wants to hear anything like it again, in live performance, than Lubomyr and I require you, dear reader, to study it or recommend it to another who might study it.
Very simplistically speaking, continuous music features fast, fluid motion and overlapping tones - the sustain pedal almost always held - creating a unique sound. This does not characterise the music - it is not simply the act of playing fast, doing a few scales and mashing the pedal while you're at it, in the same way that Beethoven's music is not the simple act of pressing a few keys quite well and flashing a few pretty chords.
In an interview in 2015, he said that: "I am yet to find anyone who can interpret my music at a level where I could say they are actually able to play the piece. None of my students are ready." Since saying this, he has congratulated me on my performances of Cloud Passade 3, Cloud 81 and Pockets of Light. However, the situation remains dire, where the overwhelming majority of his works are not written down, and are certainly not performable by anyone other than he. To be clear, (and I apologise if I say this too much) neither of us want that to be the case, and both of us would love to be wrong. Lubomyr does not seek the glory of uniqueness - always, be sure to understand him carefully. He offered a sizeable bounty, something like £10,000 if I remember rightly, to anyone who could perform Windmills in a true way. This action was a bit manic, because he does not have much money himself, but speaks to the desperation that comes from knowing your life's work is imperiled.