26 Facts About Mykola Lysenko

Mykola Vitaliiovych Lysenko was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist of the late Romantic period.

Mykola Lysenko is often credited with founding a national music tradition during the Ukrainian national revival, in the vein of contemporaries such as Grieg in Norway, The Five in Russia as well as Smetana and Dvorak in what is the Czech Republic.

Mykola Lysenko's musical setting of a patriotic poem by Oleksandr Konysky, known as the "Prayer for Ukraine", has become Ukraine's spiritual anthem.

Mykola Lysenko's hometown was a small village near the Dnieper river, and between the major cities of Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk.

The Mykola Lysenko family was wealthy and educated; they were an old aristocratic family stemming back to Cossacks of the 17th-century.

Mykola Lysenko studied music at an early age, first receiving piano instruction from his mother.

Mykola Lysenko studied piano under Alois Panocini and music theory.

In 1860, Mykola Lysenko attended the Gymnasium of Kharkiv, and studied natural sciences at the city's university, and later at the Kyiv University.

Mykola Lysenko pursued further music studies at the Leipzig Conservatory, Germany, from 1867 to 1869, where his primary teachers included Carl Reinecke for piano as well as Ernst Richter for composition and theory.

From his youth, Mykola Lysenko had developed an intense enthusiasm for Ukrainian music and culture, particularly from the influence of his grandparents, and his enjoyment of peasant songs.

Mykola Lysenko concluded that music was the best way he could express his patriotism, and aimed to create an independent school of Ukrainian music, rather than duplicate existing styles of Western classical music.

In 1869 Mykola Lysenko returned to Kyiv, and in the words of music historian Richard Taruskin, "he returned home a committed musical nationalist".

Mykola Lysenko went to Saint Petersburg from 1874 to 1876 to study orchestration with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Mykola Lysenko led another choir when he returned to Kyiv 1876.

Unlike his Russian colleagues, Mykola Lysenko received no state support, and sometimes active resistance from Russian officials.

Mykola Lysenko was jailed for his stance on the revolution in 1907.

The Ems Ukaz decree of 1876 that banned use of the Ukrainian language in print was one of the obstacles for Mykola Lysenko; he had to publish some of his scores abroad, while performances of his music had to be authorized by the imperial censor.

Mykola Lysenko was a prolific composer, writing many piano pieces, over a hundred art songs, operas, as well as orchestral, chamber and choral music.

Mykola Lysenko set music to many poets, particularly the Ukrainian modernists, which he found the best way to express his patriotic and political beliefs.

Mykola Lysenko was particularly devoted to Taras Shevchenko, and set 82 texts from the poet's Kobzar collection.

Mykola Lysenko arranged approximately 500 folk songs for voice and piano, choir and piano, or choir a cappella.

Mykola Lysenko wrote dozens of smaller works such as nocturnes, polonaises, songs without words, and program pieces.

Mykola Lysenko made the first musical-ethnographic studies of the blind kobzar Ostap Veresai which he published in 1873 and 1874; they are still exemplary.

Mykola Lysenko continued to research and transcribe the repertoire of other kobzars from other regions such as Opanas Slastion from Poltava and Pavlo Bratytsia from Chernihiv.

Mykola Lysenko made a thorough study of other Ukrainian folk instruments such as the torban.

Composers such as Stanyslav Lyudkevych, Alexander Koshetz, Kyrylo Stetsenko, Yakiv Stepovy, and mostly importantly, Mykola Lysenko Leontovych, have acknowledged his influence.