Mykola Lysenko
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Mykola Vitaliiovych Lysenko (Ukrainian: Микола Віталійович Лисенко, October 22 [O.S. October 3] 1842 – November 6 [O.S. October 24] 1912) was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist.
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[edit] Biography
He was born in Poltava Oblast son of Vitaliy Romanovich Lysenko (Ukrainian: Віталій Романович Лисенко). Since childhood he was very interested in the folksongs of Ukrainian peasants and by the poetry of Taras Shevchenko. When Shevchenko died in 1861, Lysenko was a pallbearer. During his time at Kiev University, Lysenko dedicated himself to collecting and arranging Ukrainian folksongs, which were published in seven volumes. One of his principal sources was the kobzar Ostap Veresai (after whom Lysenko later named his son).
Lysenko initially studied Biology at the Kharkiv University, studying music privately. On a scholarship given to him by the Russian Music Society he pursued further professional music studies at the Leipzig Conservatory. It is there that he understood the importance of collecting, developing and creating Ukrainian music rather than making copies of Western classics. On his return to Kyiv he launched into the creation of Ukrainian themed compositions. His Ukrainophilic approach to composition was not supported by the Russian Music Society which promoted a Great Russian Cultural presence in Ukraine. As a result Lysenko severed his relationship with them, never to compose any music in Russian.
In order to improve his orchestration and composition skills the young Lysenko traveled to St Petersburg where he took orchestration lessons from Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov in the mid 1870s, but his furvent Ukrainian nationalism and disdain for Russian autocracy kept him from achieving success. He supported the 1905 revolution and was in jail briefly in 1907. In 1908, he was the head of the Ukrainian Club, an association of Ukrainian national public figures in Kyiv.
For his opera libretti Lysenko insisted on using only the Ukrainian language. Tchaikovsky was impressed by Lysenko's Taras Bulba and wanted to stage the work in Moscow, but Lysenko's insistence on it being performed in the Ukrainian language, not Russian, prevented the performance from taking place in Moscow.
In his later years, Lysenko raised funds to open a Ukrainian School of Music. His death was widely mourned throughout Ukraine. Lysenko's daughter Maryana followed her father's footsteps as a pianist, and his son Ostap also taught music in Kiev.
[edit] Music
[edit] Piano music
His music is little known outside Ukraine, and his piano works, considered derivative of Chopin, have not sparked as much interest to musicologists as his vocal music.
[edit] Vocal music
Interest in Lysenko's art songs to the words of prominent Ukrainian poets such as Taras Shevchenko, Lesia Ukrainka, Oleksander Oles are once again gaining interest primarilly to the recent effort of British opera singer Pavlo Hunka.
[edit] Operas
[edit] Music to the words of Taras Shevchenko
[edit] Musicological studies
Lysenko made the first ethno-organological studies of the works of the blind kobzar Ostap Veresai which he published in 1873-4 which continue to be exempletive today. In the work Lysenko demonstrates the way in which Ukrainian melodic material differs from that of the Russian by its unique use and approach to chromaticism.
Lysenko continued to research and transcribe the repertoire of other kobzars from other regions such as Ostap Slastion from Poltava and Pavlo Bratytsia in Chernihiv.
He also made a thorough study of the Torban and published a collection of essays about Ukrainian folk instruments becoming the founder of Ukrainian organology.
[edit] Students
[edit] References
- The World of Mykola Lysenko: Ethnic Identity, Music, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Ukraine. Taras Filenko, Tamara Bulat. Ukraine Millennium Foundation (Canada). 2001. Hardcover. 434 pages. ISBN 966-530-045-8.
