Throughout history, musicians have continued to perform in some of humanity’s darkest moments. They have played as cities burned, armies advanced, and ordinary people struggled to survive. Their music could not stop the violence, but it offered something that war seeks to destroy: dignity, humanity, and the hope that life might one day return to normal.
On April 15, 1912, eight musicians continued playing as the Titanic sank into the freezing North Atlantic. None survived. In August 1942, starving musicians performed Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony in the besieged city of Leningrad, surrounded by death and destruction. Fifty years later, during the siege of Sarajevo, cellist Vedran Smailović performed in the shattered streets in memory of civilians killed by shellfire. I remember reporting on that extraordinary act of courage. More than three decades later, the image of one musician playing amid the ruins of a city remains with me.
Ukraine has its own remarkable history of musicians preserving their nation’s identity through occupation, persecution, and war. For centuries, Ukrainian kobzars carried the country’s history through traditional songs accompanied by the bandura. Many suffered persecution under Stalin, including the distinguished musician Hnat Khotkevych, who was executed in 1938. During the struggle for Ukrainian independence following World War I, conductor Oleksandr Koshyts led a Ukrainian choir on an international tour, introducing audiences to a culture many barely knew existed. Among the works performed was Shchedryk, later known throughout the world as Carol of the Bells.
During World War II, Ukrainian musicians continued performing despite occupation, displacement, and imprisonment. Members of the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus endured forced labor in Germany before continuing their musical traditions in displaced persons camps and eventually emigrating to the United States. Through extraordinary hardship, they preserved the music and cultural heritage of a homeland they had been forced to leave.
I think about these stories because I have witnessed how quickly war can change the lives of ordinary people.
During the winter of 2013 and 2014, I walked through the makeshift tent city in Kyiv’s Maidan Square. I remember the bitter cold, smoke hanging in the air, crowded tents, and the faces of people who had left their homes, their jobs, and their families to stand together during a period of extraordinary uncertainty. They were parents, students, workers, and grandparents who wanted a different future for their country.
Music was part of that movement. Pianists performed classical works in the freezing streets, surrounded by barricades, protesters, and security forces. Their performances offered moments of humanity as tensions grew and the confrontation became increasingly dangerous.
More than a decade later, I often wonder what happened to those people. How many are still alive? How many have lost their homes, buried someone they loved, or watched their children leave for war? How many of the musicians performing in Ukraine today stood among those crowds?
On March 9, 2022, two weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukrainian musicians returned to Maidan Square. With Russian forces threatening Kyiv, members of the Kyiv-Classic Symphony Orchestra performed the Ukrainian national anthem and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. In Kharkiv, violinist Vera Lytovchenko played for families sheltering underground as Russian attacks devastated the city. Her performances reached audiences around the world, reminding them that behind the images of destruction were ordinary people trying to survive.
Throughout Ukraine, opera companies, orchestras, choirs, and ballet companies have continued their work despite air raids, missile attacks, and the loss of colleagues. Musicians rehearse in shelters. Concerts are interrupted by warnings of incoming attacks. Performers return to the stage after sleepless nights, uncertain whether their families and friends are safe.
Some have paid with their lives. Oleksandr Shapoval, a distinguished ballet dancer with the National Opera of Ukraine, joined the armed forces and was killed in September 2022. In Kherson, conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko was reportedly killed by Russian soldiers after refusing to participate in a concert organized by the occupying authorities. Their deaths represent losses felt far beyond the stage, among families, friends, students, colleagues, and audiences.
As a journalist, I have reported on conflicts and witnessed the suffering of people caught in circumstances they never chose. Sarajevo was one of those experiences. Maidan was another. What stays with me is rarely the military operation or the political declaration. It is the people, their faces, their families, and the lives that changed forever.
For most of the world, war arrives through television screens, newspaper headlines, and casualty figures. The broadcast ends, the screen changes, and ordinary life continues. For those living through the conflict, there is no changing the channel. The fear, uncertainty, and loss follow them every day.
As the years pass, the danger is that the world becomes accustomed to suffering. What once shocked us becomes another headline, another statistic, another tragedy somewhere far away. Yet every number represents a person whose life mattered, and every death leaves families and communities struggling with an absence that cannot be repaired.
This is why music remains so important.
A symphony performed in Kyiv can move an audience in New York, London, Paris, or Tokyo without a single word of translation. Music allows people separated by geography, language, and political differences to share an emotional experience. It can communicate grief, courage, sacrifice, and hope in ways that speeches and military reports rarely achieve.
The musicians aboard the Titanic could not save the ship. The orchestra in Leningrad could not end the siege. The cellist in Sarajevo could not stop the shelling. Yet their performances became lasting reminders of the extraordinary courage people can show when everything around them is falling apart.
Today, Ukrainian musicians are continuing that tradition. Every concert performed under the threat of attack, every rehearsal held after another night of explosions, and every artist who continues to create despite personal loss represents a determination to preserve something that war cannot easily destroy.
The world has heard the explosions in Ukraine, witnessed the destruction, and counted the dead. It must also hear the music, recognize the people behind it, and understand the courage required to continue creating beauty in the midst of war.
Because long after the guns fall silent, it will be the humanity of those who endured, and the music they left behind, that future generations remember.