Nationality: Ukrainian

Classical (~1750–1820) Ukrainian

BORTNIANSKY, Dimitry

Also transliterated as Dmytro Bortnyans’ky

Born in Hlukhiv, Ukraine, 1751
Died in St Petersburg, 28 Sept/Oct 10, 1825

Bortniansky [“bort-nee-AHN-skee“] was a singer, conductor, and composer who specialized in vocal music (opera and choral music).
Bortniansky received his education as a choirboy in the court chapel in St. Petersburg. His talent was recognized, and he received additional training as an opera singer and composition lessons from Baldassare Galuppi. When Galuppi returned to Italy, Catherine the Great sent Bortniansky there to continue his studies.
Bortniansky worked at the court of Catherine the Great as a court composer and as Kapellmeister to the chapel of her son, Paul. With the accession of Paul as Paul I, Bortniansky became the first native Slavonic composer to direct the Imperial Court Chapel.
- During Bortniansky’s tenure as Kappellmeister, he expanded the standard repertory to include Western works by Haydn, Mozart, Handel, and Beethoven.
Bortniansky composed copious amounts of Orthodox liturgical music, much of which has remained staples of the Russian Orthodox repertoire. One specialty was a multimovement a cappella genre called choral concerto; Bortniansky composed around 45 of them.¹

Learn More
Short biography from Naxos

Pieces

Sacred Concerto No. 1, “Sing unto the Lord a New Song” (Psalm 96)

20th Century Ukrainian

KOSENKO, Victor

Born in Petersburg, 12/Nov 24, 1896
Died in Kiev, Oct 3, 1938

Kosenko studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, graduating in 1918.¹
Kosenko’s teachers included Nikolai Tcherepnin, Alexander Glazunov, and Nikolay Sokolov.²
Kosenko taught at a school of music in Zhitomir (which was later renamed in his honor)³ then relocated to Kiev, and taught at the Lysenko Music Institute (1929-34) and the Kiev Conservatory (1934-8).⁴
Kosenko’s music in Romantic in style, influenced by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.⁵

Biography from Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine

Sources

Yelena Zin′kevich, “Kosenko, Viktor Stepanovich,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed March 17, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000044447.
Allan B. Ho, Notes 51, no. 4 (1995): 1466, https://doi.org/10.2307/899161.
Ibid.
Zin′kevich, “Kosenko, Viktor Stepanovich,” Grove Music Online.
Ibid.

Pieces

Cello Sonata in d minor, Op. 10

Pieces

Cello Sonata in d minor, Op. 10

Classical (~1750–1820) Ukrainian

LYSOGUB, Ilya

Born in Kulykivka, Oct 23, 1787
Died in Sedniv, 1867

[ee-LYA li-zo-HOOB]

Ilya Lysogub (also spelled Illia Lyzohub) was a cellist, composer, philanthropist, and military officer during the Napoleonic Wars. Lysogub came from a long line of military officers.
As a composer, Lysogub is best known for his Cello Sonata in g minor (c. 1820), the first known work of its genre by a Ukrainian composer.
As a patron of the arts, Lysogub formed a close friendship with and supported the poet and writer Taras Shevchenko.²
Fun fact – Lysogub’s brother, Oleksander, was also a musician and composer.³

Pieces

Contemporary Canadian Ukrainian

MELNYK, Lubomyr

Photo of Lubomyr Melnyk by Hreinn Gudlaugsson, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Born in Ukraine in 1948

This composer lives and works in Canada.⁴ His family emigrated there when he was a child.
Melnyk studied piano as a child, and majored in Latin and Philosophy at St Paul’s College in Winnipeg.⁵
Melnyk specializes in piano and utilizes a compositional style he calls “continuous music,” which is improvisational and minimalist. His influences include Ravi Shankar, Steve Reich, and Ukrainian folk music.⁶

Composer profile from record label Erased Tapes

Composer’s website

Pieces

Le Miroir D’amour

Contemporary Ukrainian

SILVESTROV, Valentin

Photo by Roberto Massotti, courtesy of ECM Records

Full name, alternate transliteration: Valentyn Vasil′yovych Sil′vestrov

Born in Kiev, Sept 30, 1937

Silvestrov studied at the Kiev Institute of Construction Engineering before enrolling at the Kiev Conservatory (1958–64) to study harmony and counterpoint.
In his article for Grove on Silvestrov, Virko Baley discusses the conflict between avant-garde and tradition as a major theme in Silvestrov’s work. Some compositions integrate these two impulses; at other times, he explores one or the other in a single work or period. Thus, he music can range in style from neoclassicism to minimalism to atonality.⁷

March 30, 2022 NYT article about Silvestrov’s status as a refugee from the current war in Ukraine

Biography from ECM Records

Biography from Schott Music

Pieces

20th Century Ukrainian

SKORYK, Myloslav

Photograph of Myloslav Skoryk (2015) by Grigory Hansburg, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Born in L’viv, July 13, 1938
Died in Kyiv, June 1, 2020

Skoryk was a Ukrainian composer, teacher, and musicologist.
Skoryk spent much of his childhood in Siberia; his entire family was deported there from 1947⁸, until 1955 (after the death of Stalin). He’s been attending the L’viv Music School for a couple years before the family was deported.
Skoryk studied at the L’viv Conservatory, and at the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers included Dmitri Kabalevsky.
Skoryk was an influential educator who taught at the L’viv Conservatory and Kyiv Conservatory.
During his lifetime, Skoryk was award the title “People’s Artist of Ukraine.”⁹

In Memoriam article from Ukraine World

Short biography from the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine

Pieces

Contemporary Ukrainian

STANKOVYCH, Yevhen Fedorovych

Image courtesy of the composer's website

Born in Svaliava, Zakarpattya region, Ukraine, Sept 19, 1942

“Stankovych’s music, marked by a strikingly dramatic temperament and unfettered emotion, is supported by a full command of modernist techniques without allowing any one of these to predominate; and while the style is definably one of the late 20th century, folk themes of Ukraine’s various cultural groups have paramount importance in the substance of his language.”
Oxford Music Online¹⁰

Stankovych studied at the Kyiv Conservatory under Borys Lyatoshynsky and Myroslav Skoryk, graduating in 1970.
His compositional output consists primarily of music for orchestra, choir, chamber ensemble, and stage (ballet and opera).¹¹
The recipient of many awards and accolades, Stankovych was recognized by UNESCO’s World Tribune as one of 10 best works of 1985 for his Chamber Symphony No. 3, and he won the Taras Shevchenko State Award in 1986.¹²
Many of the composer’s larger works were written in response to tragic events in Ukraine’s history. For example, Dictum (1987) is a massive symphony commemorating the Chernobyl disaster.¹³

Learn More

Composer’s website

Pieces

Violin Concerto No. 2

20th Century Ukrainian

ZHUK, Alexander

Born in 1907
Died in 1995

Alexander Zhuk was a Kharkiv composer, conductor, and educator.¹¹

Pieces

Ukrainian Rhapsody