M. V. Lysenko

(1842-1912)

Mykola Lysenko’s name is connected with Ukrainian national music. He was a versatile man of art: composer, conductor, pianist, teacher and collector of folk songs. He combined in his works national originality with best achievements of world musical culture.

M. Lysenko studied at the Kharkiv and Kyiv Universities at the natural science departments. Then he got musical education at the Leipzig Conservatoire. But after graduation from it he didn’t remain abroad and returned to his native country. He devoted himself fully to the development of the Ukrainian music.

At the time, Lysenko was at the center of Ukrainian cultural and musical life in Kyiv. He gave piano recitals and organized choirs for performances in Kyiv and tours through Ukraine. Mykola Lysenko studied and collected folk songs throughout his life. Lysenko's musical compositions were numerous and varied. His operatic works include the singspiel Chornomortsi ; the  operetta Natalka from Poltava (1889); the operas (based on works by Nicolai Gogol) Christmas Night (1873–82), Utoplena (The Drowned Maiden, 1883), and Taras Bulba (1890); the miniature opera Nocturne; and three operas for children: Koza Dereza (Billy Goat's Bluff, 1888), Pan Kots’kyi (Sir Catsky, 1891), and Winter and Spring (1892).

He made his operas, choral and chamber compositions truly national. Working not only in symphonic genre Lysenko laid the foundations of entire national musical culture. His best compositions are numerous: 14 operas, the symphony, quartets, string trios, more than 50 piano works etc. All of them are distinguished with original feature of the Ukrainian national instrumental style.

He had created songs, romances, ensembles, choirs and cantatas. Settings of words by Taras Shevchenko occupy a special place in Lysenko's works. The settings include solo art songs, choral works, and cantatas for choir and orchestra, such as Raduisia nyvo nepolytaia(Rejoice, Unwatered Field),  Reve ta stohne Dnipr shyrokyi (The Mighty Dnieper Roars and Bellows), Sadok vyshnevyi kolo khaty (The Cherry Orchard by the House), and Na vichnu pamiat’ Kotliarevs’komu (To the Eternal Memory of Kotliarevsky). Shevchenko's collection Kobzar particularly fascinated Lysenko, who composed music for 82 of its texts.

Lysenko was the founder of the national movement in Ukrainian music, based on a specific Ukrainian cultural tradition and the originality of its folk music. His prolific and versatile life's work became the foundation for the further development and expansion of Ukrainian musical culture.

Lysenko influenced a large group of Ukrainian composers, including  Mykola Leontovych,  Stanyslav Ludkevych, Mykhailo Verykivsky.

Lysenko’s creative work is very much alive today, it sounds all over Ukraine and the whole world. Nowadays Lysenko’s opera “Taras Bul’ba” opens a season in Kyiv Opera House and is a great success with the public.

B. M. Lyatoshynsky

(1895-1968)

Borys Mykolajovych Lyatoshyns’ky, Ukrainian composer of world importance, prominent teacher and outstanding public figure was a leading member of the new generation of twentieth century Ukrainian composers and is today honoured as the father of contemporary Ukrainian music.

Arriving in Kiev from his native city of Zhitomir in 1914 he got his education at the Law department of the Kyiv University. In 1919 he graduated from the Kyiv Conservatoire where he studied composition under R. M. Glier.

After graduation he worked at the Conservatoire and educated many talented musicians. From 1935 to 1938 and from 1941 to 1944 he taught concurrently at the Moscow Conservatory.

As a composer he wrote a variety of works, including five symphonies, symphonic poems and other shorter orchestral works, choral and vocal music, two operas, chamber music and a number of works for solo piano. His earliest compositions were romantic and lyrical in style, influenced most of all by his esteem for the music of Schumann and Borodin. B. M. Lyatoshyns’ky was the founder of Ukrainian symphonic music, the author of the first Ukrainian symphony and chamber-instrumental ensembles.

Borys Mykolajovych combined traditions of Russian classical music and musical devices of different Slav people.

Lyatoshyns’ky was the composer of two operas, two cantatas, five symphonies, several symphonic poems, suits, works for the piano, violin, chamber-instrumental ensembles, sonatas, a number of film and theatre music. Choral music held an important place among his works.

In his later oeuvre he simplified his harmonies and explored new ways of employing Slavic folklore to the enrichment of art music, which resulted in a mixture of traditional cadential harmony and multilayered polyphony with complex concentrations of dissonance. He collected and arranged folk music. Among his other works can be named two operas ("The Golden Hoop" 1930, "Shchors — the Commander" 1938), five String Quartets film and incidental music.

The interest to Lyatoshyns’ky’s works grows from year to year not only in our country but over the world. Kara Karayev, Leonid Grabovsky and Valentin Silvestrov were among his pupils.

His music belongs to eternity. It will sound for our followers as well.