17 Facts About Kyrylo Stetsenko

Kyrylo Hryhorovych Stetsenko was a prolific Ukrainian composer, conductor, critic, and teacher.

Kyrylo Stetsenko was born in Kvitky, in the land of Cherkashchyna, in Ukraine.

Kyrylo Stetsenko's father, Hryhoriy, was a painter of icons and was known around for painting churches in nearby villages.

When Kyrylo Stetsenko was aged 10, his maternal uncle Danylo Horyanskyi took him to study at the Saint Sophia Church School, where the boy was enrolled for five years, from 1892 to 1897.

Kyrylo Stetsenko first met the Ukrainian composer in 1899 and became part of Lysenko's choir as a singer and an assistant-conductor.

Kyrylo Stetsenko was complicit in the publication of his own choral arrangement of the Ukrainian national anthem without Russian censor approval in 1911.

Kyrylo Stetsenko managed to return to the city only to leave one year later due to political and economic pressures.

In 1911, urged by his uncle, Kyrylo Stetsenko became an Orthodox priest.

Kyrylo Stetsenko returned to Kyiv with the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Kyrylo Stetsenko led the other choir, touring Ukraine to promote national unity.

Kyrylo Stetsenko left Kyiv to work in a parish in the village of Vepryk, south of the city.

Kyrylo Stetsenko's daughter, Dora Kuzmenko, was an opera singer in her native Ukraine.

Kyrylo Stetsenko escaped capture by the Soviets during WWII and lived in a Displaced Persons camp in Austria for a number of years before immigrating to United States.

Kyrylo Stetsenko's grandson, Kyrylo Stetsenko, is a violinist and composer in Ukraine.

Kyrylo Stetsenko composed over 30 solo vocal works to the words by Ukrainian poets Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Pavlo Hrabovsky, Oleksandr Oles and others.

Kyrylo Stetsenko wrote 42 art songs, over 100 sacred and secular choral pieces, including two liturgies and a requiem, and music to a dozen stage works.

Kyrylo Stetsenko's grave was fancied up with a large stone monument to the composer placed next to it.