Kyrylo Stetsenko

Kyrylo Hryhorovych Stetsenko (; May 12, 1882 – April 29, 1922) was a prolific Ukrainian composer, conductor, critic, and teacher. Late in his life he became a Ukrainian Orthodox priest and head of the Music section at the Ministry of Education of the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic.

Biography

Early life and education Kyrylo Stetsenko was born in Kvitky, in the land of Cherkashchyna, in Ukraine. His father, Hryhoriy, was a painter of icons and was known around for painting churches in nearby villages. His mother, Mariia, was the daughter of a deacon in the same village. Kyrylo was eighth of eleven children.

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. The young boy lived with his uncle in Kyiv, only returning home to his parents during the summer. However, since his family was poor, the boy had to work during this "vacation", and his mother would spend the money that he earned on new clothes for him.

During his studies at the school, Stetsenko sang in the school choir and after three years, he already conducted the group. The boy also learned how to play the harmonium and the piano. At age thirteen, wrote his first composition: I Will Always Praise the Lord for choir.

As political repressions were renewed against Ukrainians, famine and disease began to spread. In spring 1922 Stetsenko died of typhus while tending to the sick during an outbreak of the disease.

Family His daughter, Dora Kuzmenko, was an opera singer in her native Ukraine. She 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. She died in Syracuse NY in the 1960s.

His grandson, Kyrylo Stetsenko, is a violinist and composer in Ukraine. He provides information about his grandfather.

Works

In his works and activity, Stetsenko continued the national focus in Ukrainian music, that was started by Mykola Lysenko. 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. He wrote 42 art songs, over 100 sacred and secular choral pieces, including two liturgies and a requiem, and music to a dozen stage works. His Art Songs have been recorded by renowned British Bass Baritone Pavlo Hunka.

Stetsenko's greatest and most well-known works were written a few months before the end of his life. His last work was the panakhyda written in memory of his teacher and friend Mykola Lysenko.

List of major works Choral works church pieces (2 liturgies, 1 pankhyda) cantatas choruses a cappella and with piano accompaniment arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs. Plays Proposing to a Potter's daughter by Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko What Thyrsus rustled about by Spyrydon Cherkasenko Buval'shchyna by A. Velysovskyi Operas (incomplete) Polonianka Karmaliuk Haidamaky Theatre works Ifigenia in Tauridia after a drama by Lesya Ukrainka music to the poem Haidamaky by Taras Shevchenko Children's operas Ivasyk-Telesyk The Fox, the Cat, and the Rooster Numerous children's songs.

Legacy

In 1982 in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Kyrylo Stetsenko's birth, Stetsenko's house in Vepryk was transformed into a museum of the composer, with an exhibition of what was in there during his life. Besides this, the church where the composer worked was also revived. Stetsenko's grave was fancied up with a large stone monument to the composer placed next to it.