Nikolai Lysenko, whose biography is described in this article, is also a conductor, pianist, public figure, and a talented teacher. All his life he collected song folklore. He did a lot for the social and cultural life of Ukraine.

Family

Lysenko Nikolai Vitalievich - a native of an old Cossack family. His father, Vitaly Romanovich, was a colonel in a cuirassier regiment. Mother, Olga Eremeevna, descended from landowners Lutsenko.

Childhood

WITH early childhood primary education Nikolai, who was born in 1842, the mother was engaged herself, together with the poet Fet. She taught Nikolai French, dancing and correct manners. And Fet taught Russian. When Nikolai was 5 years old, Olga Eremeevna discovered in her son a penchant for music. A music teacher was invited to develop talent. From early childhood, Nikolai was fond of poetry. His love for Ukrainian folk songs was instilled in him by his grandparents.

Education

After home schooling ended, Nikolai began to prepare for entering the gymnasium. First he studied at the boarding school of Weil, and then Guedouin. Nikolai Lysenko entered the 2nd Kharkov Gymnasium in 1855. He graduated from it with a silver medal in 1859.

Then he entered Kharkiv University. to the Faculty of Natural Sciences. A year later, the parents left to live in Kyiv, and Nikolai moved to the Kiev University, to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, to the department natural sciences. He graduated from the university in 1864 and a year later became a candidate of natural sciences.

Some time later, in 1867, Nikolai Vitalievich continued his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory, which was the best in all of Europe. He was taught to play the piano by K. Reinecke, E. Wenzel and I. Moscheles, compositions - E. Richter, theories - Paperitz. Further, Nikolai Lysenko improved in symphonic instrumentation at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under Rimsky-Korsakov.

The beginning of the creative path

At the gymnasium, he took private lessons in music. And gradually became famous pianist. He was often invited to balls and parties, where he performed Chopin, Beethoven. He played dance compositions and improvised with Ukrainian melodies.

When Nikolai studied at Kiev University, he sought to acquire as much knowledge of music as possible. Therefore, he carefully studied operas such as Glinka, Wagner, etc. It was from that time that Nikolai began to collect and harmonize Ukrainian folk songs.

At the same time, Nikolai Lysenko organized student choirs, which he led, and performed with them in public. While studying at the Leipzig Conservatory, he realized that it was more important to create, collect and develop Ukrainian folk music than to copy foreign classics.

creative career

Since 1878, Nikolai became a piano teacher, working at the Institute of Noble Maidens. In the 1890s taught young people at the music schools of Tutkovsky and Blumenfeld. In 1904, Nikolai Vitalievich founded his own school in Kyiv (since 1913 - named after Lysenko). It became the first institution to provide higher education at the conservatory level.

To create a school, he used the money donated by his friends, which was intended for the purchase of a summer residence and the publication of his works. The educational institution was constantly under close police control. In 1907, Nikolai Vitalievich was even arrested, but he was released the very next morning.

From 1908 to 1912 he chaired the board of the Ukrainian Club. This society led educational activities. Organized musical and literary evenings and refresher courses for teachers. In 1911, Nikolai Vitalievich was the head of the committee that contributed to the installation of the monument to T. Shevchenko. It was Lysenko who subsequently perfected the music for the operetta Natalka Poltavka.

Creativity Lysenko

Lysenko wrote his first work in 1868, when he studied at the Leipzig Conservatory. It was a collection Ukrainian songs for piano with voice. This work is of great scientific and ethnographic value. In the same year, the second work was published - "Zapovit", written on the anniversary of Shevchenko's death.

Nikolai Lysenko has always been at the center of Kyiv's cultural life. Being in the leadership of the Russian Musical Society, he took an active part in many concerts that were held throughout Ukraine.

Engaged in musical circles. And even obtained permission to stage plays performed in Ukrainian. In 1872, Nikolai Vitalievich wrote two operettas: "Christmas Night" and "Chernomortsy". Subsequently, they became the basis of the national Ukrainian art forever entering the theatrical repertoire.

In 1873, Lysenko published the first musicological work on Ukrainian folklore. At the same time, Nikolai Vitalievich wrote piano works and symphonic fantasy.

In St. Petersburg, together with V. Paskhalov, he organized choral concerts. Their program included works by Lysenko, as well as Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian and Polish songs. It was in St. Petersburg that he wrote his first rhapsody on a Ukrainian theme, the 1st and 2nd polonaises, and the piano sonata.

Returning to Kyiv in 1876, Lysenko focused on performing activities. He organized concerts, played the piano, created new choirs. The collected money from the events he gave to public needs. It was during this time that he wrote most of his major works.

In 1880, Nikolai Vitalievich began to work on one of the best operas Taras Bulba. Then came many more musical works. Separately, it is worth noting the improvement of music in the operetta "Natalka Poltavka" in 1889. This work has been subjected to numerous adaptations more than once. But only in Lysenko's edition did it turn out to be artistically valuable.

Nikolai Vitalievich created a separate direction - children's opera. From 1892 to 1902 he arranged choral tours in Ukraine. In 1904, Lysenko opened a drama school, which long years has become an important Ukrainian institution for special education.

In 1905, he, together with A. Kosice, founded the Boyan society-choir. Conducted by the creators themselves. But soon "Boyan" broke up due to political conditions and lack of material resources. The society lasted only a year.

IN last years Life Lysenko wrote the work "Aeneid". The opera mercilessly criticized the autocratic order and became the only example of satire in the musical Ukrainian theater.

Social activity

Throughout his life, Nikolai was engaged not only in creativity, but also social activities. He is one of the organizers of the peasant Sunday school. was engaged in preparation Ukrainian dictionary. Participated in the census of the Kyiv population. Worked in the Southwestern branch of the Russian geographical society.

Personal life

In 1868, Lysenko married his second cousin, Olga Alexandrovna O'Connor. She was 8 years younger than him. They lived in marriage for 12 years, but then separated because they had no children. They did not formalize the divorce.

Lysenko's second marriage was civil. At one of the concerts in Chernigov, he met Lipskaya Olga Antonovna. She later became his common-law wife. They had five children. Olga died after giving birth to another child in 1900.

Composer's death

Lysenko Nikolai, composer, died on November 6, 1912 from a sudden heart attack. Thousands of people from all Ukrainian regions came to say goodbye to him. The funeral service was held in the Vladimir Cathedral. The choir walked ahead of the funeral procession. It consisted of 1200 people, and their singing could be heard even in Kyiv. Lysenko was buried in Kiev

Outstanding Ukrainian composer, folklorist, conductor, pianist and public figure. The name of Nikolai Lysenko is associated with the time of formation professional music, theater and art education, in Ukraine. Nikolai Vitalievich Lysenko was born on March 10 1842 in the village Grinki of the Kremenchug district in the Poltava region in a Cossack-landlord family. Nikolai's father, Vitaliy Romanovich, was a Poltava nobleman and served in the army. Mykola Lysenko, breaking this old tradition, laid the foundation for a new one - a generation talented musicians. Nikolai's parents were wealthy people and nurtured the child very much. Little Nikolai Lysenko walked around dressed in velvet and lace, he was a very capricious and headstrong guy and did not want to listen to anyone. From an early age they taught him Russian literacy, French, dancing and playing the piano, that is, they were brought up, like most of the then noble children.

And although Nikolai was not told anything about Ukraine, she surrounded him from all sides. Nikolai Lysenko got acquainted with his native language and folk songs at his grandmother's. At the age of 9, Nikolai was taken to Kyiv to the Geduen school. He studied very well, was one of the first, and did not leave music. After graduating from the Geduen school, which was equal to 3 classes of a gymnasium, Nikolai Lysenko entered the 4th grade of a gymnasium in Kharkov. Musical studies lasted, and every year the young man played better and better. Under the guidance of teachers - the then famous pianist Dmitriev, later the Czech Kilchik, Mikola Lisenko plays the works of great composers of different nations, learns from them musical taste.

After graduating from the gymnasium, Nikolai Lysenko entered Kharkov University, and a year later he transferred to Kiev University. Young Lysenko became interested in the Ukrainian national movement - he began to study and record Ukrainian folk songs, including the songs of the famous kobzar Ostap Veresai. At this time, Nikolai Lysenko felt himself not only a lover of the people, but also a sincere and forever faithful son of Ukraine, ready to give his whole life and work in the interests of his native people.

IN 1864 Mr. Mykola Lysenko graduated from the natural department of the Kyiv University of St. Vladimir, and a year later received a diploma of a candidate of natural sciences. Stay in Kyiv, participation in the work of the "Kyiv Society" had a decisive influence on the outlook of the young man.

IN 1867 Nikolai Lysenko leaves for Leipzig to complete his musical education. Right here in 1868 Mikola Lysenko compiles and publishes the first collection of his recorded folk songs and the first 10 songs that he himself created to the words of Taras Shevchenko. Nikolai Lysenko finished the Leipzig Conservatory with a brilliant performance of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto with his own cadenza, which German magazines respectfully wrote about.

WITH 1869 Mr. Nikolai Lysenko lived in Kyiv. He becomes a teacher at a music school, gives private lessons. He is invited to many wealthy families, but he does not pursue such fame. Getting a good salary for teaching, he devotes all his free time to Ukrainian songs: he publishes new collections of folk songs, composes his own songs. IN 1876 a decree was issued that forbade the printing of books, works, for the theater and musical works with Ukrainian words. Even a simple folk song was forbidden to be sung in a concert if the words were Ukrainian. But Mykola Lysenko is compiling new collections of folk songs.

In the 90s of the XIX century. Nikolai Lysenko, having organized the choir, traveled with him to Ukraine more than once. I wanted to show the Ukrainians all the wealth and beauty of their native song and teach them how to sing this song. Around the composer concentrated the then Ukrainian musical and cultural life Kyiv. Mykola Lysenko gave concerts as a pianist, organized choirs and gave concerts with them in Kyiv and throughout Ukraine. IN 1900 Nikolai Lysenko established in Kyiv own school. To stage his works, he often visited Galicia, where he was well known and loved.

Mykola Lysenko created many songs based on the texts of Ivan Franko, Mikhail Voronoy and Lesya Ukrainka. He is one of the founders of the Ukrainian professional theater, in particular, the opera: he wrote 11 operas, created music for up to 10 more dramatic performances. The composer never saw his main brainchild, the opera Taras Bulba, despite P. Tchaikovsky's proposal to contribute to its production on the Moscow stage. But extremely popular and still his "Natalka Poltavka". The opera legacy of Mykoli Lysenko continues its stage life today in various editions.

The funeral of the father of Ukrainian music was also a frank political demonstration of many thousands. For the first time, Ukrainian youth stood up for the defense of the national shrine, surrounding the mournful march and preventing the police from making arrests. However, the highest award of Nikolai Lysenko is not just a tribute to the memory and honor of his descendants, but the fact that it was he who was destined to become the author of two national anthems, which claim spiritual greatness man and people. The first of them is "The Eternal Revolutionary" (in 1905 d.) to a poem by I. Frank, the second - "Children's Hymn" to a poem by O. Konisky (in 1885 d.), now world-famous "Prayer for Ukraine", which with 1992 approved by the official anthem of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate).

Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor, teacher, collector song folklore and public figure.

Nikolai Lysenko was from the old Cossack foremen's family Lysenko. Nikolai's father Vitaly Romanovich, was a colonel of the Order cuirassier regiment. Mother, Olga Eremeevna, came from a Poltava landowner family Lutsenko. Nikolai's homeschooling was done by his mother and famous poet A. A. Fet. The mother taught her son French, refined manners and dances, Afanasy Fet taught Russian. At the age of five, noticing the boy's musical talent, a music teacher was invited for him. From early childhood, Nikolai was fond of poetry. Taras Shevchenko and Ukrainian folk songs, the love for which was instilled in him by his great-uncles and grandmother - Nicholas And Maria Bulyubashi. At the end of home education, in order to prepare for the gymnasium, Nikolai moved to Kyiv, where he studied first at the Weyl boarding house, then at the Guedouin boarding house.

In 1855, Nikolai was sent to the second Kharkov gymnasium, which he graduated with a silver medal in the spring of 1859. While studying at the gymnasium, Lysenko studied music privately, gradually becoming a well-known pianist in Kharkov. He was invited to evenings and balls, where Nikolai performed plays Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, played dances and improvised on the themes of Ukrainian folk melodies. After graduating from the gymnasium, Nikolai Vitalievich entered the natural science faculty of Kharkov University. However, a year later his parents moved to Kyiv, and Nikolai Vitalievich transferred to the Department of Natural Sciences of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Kyiv University. After graduating from the university on June 1, 1864, Nikolai Vitalievich already in May 1865 received the degree of candidate of natural sciences.

After graduating from Kyiv University and a short service, N. V. Lysenko decides to get a higher musical education. In September 1867 he entered the Leipzig Conservatory, considered one of the best in Europe. His piano teachers were K. Reinecke, I. Moscheles And E. Wenzel, by composition - E. F. Richter, according to the theory - paperritz. It was there that Mykola Vitalyevich realized that it was more important to collect, develop and create Ukrainian music than to copy Western classics.

In the summer of 1868, N. Lysenko married Olga Alexandrovna O'Connor, who was his second cousin and was 8 years younger. However, after 12 years of marriage, Nikolai and Olga, without formally filing a divorce, broke up due to the lack of children.

Having completed his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory with great success in 1869, Nikolai Vitalievich returned to Kiev, where he lived, with a short break (from 1874 to 1876, Lysenko improved his skills in the field of symphonic instrumentation at the St. N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov), a little over forty years, engaged in creative, teaching and social activities. He took part in the organization of a Sunday school for peasant children, later in the preparation of the Dictionary Ukrainian language”, in the census of the population of Kyiv, in the work of the Southwestern branch of the Russian Geographical Society.

In 1878, Nikolai Lysenko took the position of piano teacher at the Institute of Noble Maidens. In the same year, he enters into a civil marriage with Olga Antonovna Lipskaya who was a pianist and his student. The composer met her during concerts in Chernihiv. N. Lysenko had five children from this marriage. Olga Lipskaya died in 1900 after giving birth to a child.

In the 1890s, in addition to teaching at the institute and private lessons, N. Lysenko worked in music schools S. Blumenfeld And N. Tutkovsky.

In the autumn of 1904, the Music and Drama School (since 1913 - named after N. V. Lysenko) began to work in Kyiv, organized by Nikolai Vitalievich. It was the first Ukrainian educational institution that provided higher musical education under the program of the conservatory. To organize the school, N. Lysenko used the funds collected by his friends during the celebration of the 35th anniversary of the composer's activity in 1903 to publish his works and buy dachas for him and the children. At school, Nikolai Vitalievich taught piano. Both the school and N. Lysenko as its director were under constant police surveillance. In February 1907, Nikolai Vitalievich was arrested, but released the next morning.

From 1908 to 1912, N. Lysenko was the chairman of the board of the Ukrainian Club society. This society carried out a large public educational activity: organized literary and musical evenings organized courses for folk teachers. In 1911, Lysenko headed the committees created by this society to promote the construction of the monument to T. Shevchenko on the 50th anniversary of the poet's death.

Nikolai Lysenko died on November 6, 1912, suddenly from a heart attack. Thousands of people from all regions of Ukraine came to say goodbye to the composer. Lysenko was buried in the Vladimir Cathedral. The choir, which walked ahead of the funeral procession, was 1200 people, its singing could be heard even in the center of Kyiv. N.V. Lysenko was buried in Kyiv at the Baikove cemetery.

Creation

While studying at Kiev University, in an effort to acquire as much musical knowledge as possible, Nikolai Lysenko studied opera A. Dargomyzhsky, Glinka, A. Serova got acquainted with music Wagner And Schuman. It was from that time that he began collecting and harmonizing Ukrainian folk songs, for example, he recorded a wedding ceremony (with text and music) in Pereyaslavsky district. In addition, N. Lysenko was the organizer and leader of student choirs, with whom he spoke publicly.

While studying at the Leipzig Conservatory in October 1868, N. V. Lysenko published the “Collection of Ukrainian Songs for Voice and Piano” - the first release of his adaptations of forty Ukrainian folk songs, which, in addition to their practical purpose, are of great scientific and ethnographic value. In the same 1868, he wrote his first significant work - "Zapovit" ("Testament") to the words of T. Shevchenko, on the anniversary of the poet's death. This work opened the cycle "Music for the Kobzar", which included more than 80 vocal and instrumental works of various genres, published in seven series, the last of which was published in 1901.

N. V. Lysenko was in the center of the musical and national-cultural life of Kyiv. In 1872-1873, being a member of the directorate of the Russian Musical Society, he took an active part in its concerts held throughout Ukraine; led a choir of 50 singers, organized in 1872 at the Philharmonic Society of Music and Singing Lovers; took part in the Circle of Music and Singing Lovers, the Circle of Music Lovers Ya. Spiglazova. In 1872, a circle led by N. Lysenko and M. Staritsky, obtained permission for public performances of plays in Ukrainian. In the same year, Lysenko wrote the operettas Chernomortsy and Christmas Night (later revised into an opera), which became firmly established in the theatrical repertoire, becoming the basis of the Ukrainian national opera art. In 1873, the first musicological work by N. Lysenko on Ukrainian language was published. musical folklore"Characteristic musical features Little Russian thoughts and songs performed by kobzar Ostap Veresai. During the same period, Nikolai Vitalievich wrote many piano works, as well as a symphonic fantasy on Ukrainian folk themes "Cossack-Shumka".

During the St. Petersburg period, N. Lysenko took part in concerts of the Russian Geographical Society, led choral courses. Together with V. N. Paskhalov Nikolai Vitalievich arranged concerts of choral music in the Salt Town, the program of which included Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Serbian songs and works by Lysenko himself. He develops friendships with composers mighty handful". In St. Petersburg, he wrote the first rhapsody on Ukrainian themes, the first and second concert polonaises, and a sonata for piano. In the same place, Lysenko began work on the opera "Marusya Boguslavka" (unfinished) and made the second edition of the opera "Christmas Night". In St. Petersburg, his collection of girlish and children's songs and dances Molodoshchi (Young Years) was published.

Returning to Kyiv in 1876, Nikolai Lysenko launched an active performing activity. He hosted annual Slavic concerts”, performed as a pianist in concerts of the Kyiv branch of the Russian Musical Society, at the evenings of the Literary and Artistic Society, of which he was a member of the board, in monthly folk concerts in the People's Audience Hall. Organized annual Shevchenko concerts. From seminarians and students familiar with musical notation, Nikolai Vitalievich re-organizes choirs, in which they received the beginnings of art education K. Stetsenko, P. Demutsky, L. Revutsky, O. Lysenko and others. The money collected from the concerts went to public needs, for example, in favor of 183 students of Kyiv University, who were sent to the army for participating in the anti-government demonstration of 1901. At this time, he wrote almost all of his works for piano. large form, including the second rhapsody, the third polonaise, the nocturne in C-sharp minor. In 1880, N. Lysenko began work on his most significant work - the opera "Taras Bulba" based on the story of the same name N. Gogol to the libretto by M. Staritsky, which he would complete only ten years later. In the 1980s, Lysenko wrote such works as The Drowned Woman, a lyric-fiction opera based on N. Gogol's May Night to a libretto by M. Staritsky; "Rejoice, unwatered field" - cantata on verses by T. Shevchenko; third edition of "Christmas Night" (1883). In 1889, Nikolai Vitalievich improved and orchestrated the music for the operetta "Natalka Poltavka" based on the work I. Kotlyarevsky, in 1894 he wrote music for the extravaganza "Magic Dream" to the text of M. Staritsky, and in 1896 the opera "Sappho".

Among the author's achievements of N. Lysenko, it is also necessary to note the creation of a new genre - children's opera. From 1888 to 1893, he wrote three children's operas based on folk tales to the libretto of the Dnieper-Chaika: "Koza-Dereza", "Pan Kotsky (Kotsky)", "Winter and Spring, or The Snow Queen". "Koza-Dereza" became a kind of gift from Nikolai Lysenko to his children.

From 1892 to 1902, Mykola Lysenko four times arranged tour concerts in Ukraine, the so-called "choir trips", in which his own choral works based on Shevchenko's texts and arrangements of Ukrainian songs were performed mainly. In 1892, Lysenko's art history research "On the torban and the music of Widort's songs" was published, and in 1894 - "Folk musical instruments in Ukraine".

In 1905, N. Lysenko, together with A. Kosice organized a choral society "Boyan", with which he arranged choral concerts of Ukrainian, Slavic and Western European music. The conductors of the concerts were himself and A. Kosice. However, due to unfavorable political conditions and the lack of a material base, the society disintegrated, having existed for a little over a year. At the beginning of the 20th century, Lysenko wrote music for the dramatic performances The Last Night (1903) and Hetman Doroshenko. In 1905, he wrote the work "Hey, for our native land." In 1908, the choir "Quiet Evening" was written to the words of V. Samoylenko, in 1912 - the opera "Nocturne", lyrical romances on texts are created Lesya Ukrainka, Dnipro Chaika, A. Olesya.

In the last years of his life, Nikolai Vitalievich wrote a number of works from the field of sacred music, which continued, founded by him back in late XIX century "Cherubic" cycle: "The Blessed Virgin, mother of the Russian land" (1909), "Kamo I will go from Your presence, Lord" (1909), "The Virgin today gives birth to the Substantial", "The Cross tree"; in 1910, "David's Psalm" was written to the text of T. Shevchenko.

Memory

* The name of N. V. Lysenko is carried by the streets in Kyiv and Lvov, Lviv National Academy of Music, Kharkov State academic theater opera and ballet (since 1944) and Poltava School of Music.
*In 1962 string quartet The Kyiv State Philharmonic was named after N. V. Lysenko. In the same year it was established musical competition named after Nikolai Lysenko, which had national status until 1992, and since 1992 has become international.
* December 29, 1965 next to National Opera Ukraine, a monument to N. V. Lysenko was opened on Theater Square. Sculptor A. A. Kovalev, architect V. G. Gnezdilov.
* The monument was erected in the composer's homeland, in the village of Grinki.
* In 1986 at the film studio named after A. Dovzhenko director T. Levchuk The historical and biographical film "And the memory will respond in sounds ..." was filmed, showing pages from the life of Nikolai Vitalyevich Lysenko. The role of the composer in the film was played by F. N. Strigun.
* A memorial museum has been opened in the Kyiv apartment of N. V. Lysenko at 95 Saksaganskogo Street.
* In 1992, the Ukrainian Post issued a postage stamp dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of N. V. Lysenko.
* In 2002, to the 160th anniversary of the composer National Bank Ukraine issued a jubilee coin with a face value of 2 hryvnia. The obverse of the coin depicts a musical fragment from the composition "Prayer for Ukraine" (1885), and the reverse depicts a portrait of N. Lysenko.

Major works

operas

* "Christmas Night" (1872, 2nd edition 1874, 3rd edition 1883)
* "The Drowned Woman" (1885)
* "Natalka Poltavka" (1889)
* "Taras Bulba" (1890)
* "Sappho" (1896)
* Aeneid (1911)
* "Nocturne" (1912)

Children's operas

* "Koza-Dereza" (1888)
* "Pan Kotsky" (1891)
* "Winter and Spring, or the Snow Queen" (1892)

Operettas

* "Chernomortsy" (1872)

Works on the words of T. Shevchenko

* cycle "Music for the Kobzar" (1868-1901), which includes more than 80 different vocal genres from songs to extended musical and dramatic scenes.

Musicological works

* "Characteristics of the musical features of the Little Russian dumas and songs performed by the kobzar Ostap Veresai" (1873)
* "On the torban and the music of Widort's songs" (1892)
* "Folk Musical Instruments in Ukraine" (1894)

100 great Ukrainians Team of authors

Nikolai Lysenko (1842–1912) composer, pianist, teacher, choral conductor, founder of the Ukrainian classical music

Nikolay Lysenko

composer, pianist, teacher, choir conductor, founder of Ukrainian classical music

Nikolai Vitalyevich Lysenko was born on March 22, 1842 in the village of Grinki (now Globinsky District Poltava region). The era of formation of Ukrainian professional music, theater and music and theater education in Ukraine is connected with the name of N. V. Lysenko.

The Lysenko family descended from a Cossack foreman of the time of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the founder of the family is considered the legendary Cossack leader Vovgur Lys, an associate of Maxim Krivonos. From the hands of Ivan Mazepa, Ivan Yakovlevich Lysenko, a colonel of Chernigov and Pereyaslav, the appointed hetman of Ukraine in 1674, received the nobility. Among his sons and sons-in-law were 12 Cossack centurions, as well as representatives of other Cossack ranks. In subsequent generations of the clan, the military again predominate. N. Lysenko's father Vitaliy Romanovich served in the Cuirassier Military Order Regiment, retired with the rank of "colonel in uniform", was elected district marshal (leader of the nobility) of Tarashchansky and Skvirsky counties. At the end of his days, he was engaged in ethnographic research, sang Ukrainian songs beautifully, easily picking up accompaniment on the piano.

A descendant of an ancient gentry family, N. Lysenko combined in himself the devotion bequeathed by his ancestors to the national idea and a penchant for state and educational activities with extraordinary musical talent, becoming in Ukraine one of the leaders of the national-cultural movement of the mid-19th - early 20th centuries. In the words of our contemporary - Lysenko's great-great-grandson, also Nikolay Vitalyevich and also a musician, "Lysenko replaced the Cossack saber with a conductor's baton and made a folk song a weapon in the struggle for the independence of Ukraine."

WITH early years the worldview of the future composer is formed under the influence of two musical elements. On the one hand, this is the salon music-making of Olga Eremeevna's mother (from the Lutsenko family) - an excellent pianist, a pupil of the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, that is, a supporter of European and, to some extent, Russian classics. For little Nikolai, this sphere opens through classical sonatas, paraphrases and medleys on the themes of popular operas, fashionable salon plays like The Sleeping Lion by A. Kontsky. The main thing is that in a family where the serf orchestra of my mother's grandfather Peter Bulyubash was well remembered, musical talent, the need to study music aroused attention and understanding. mother, noticing musical ability son, already at the age of 5 she begins to teach him how to play the piano. At the age of six, the boy amazed everyone with his musical memory, purity and fluency of playing. And also "the amazing ease with which he mastered the motives and selected them with harmonization on the piano." At the age of 9, he will write his first piece of music - the graceful "Polka", published by his father as a gift for his son's birthday.

Another musical element exists outside the walls of the master's house, and sometimes, like grandmother Maria Vasilyevna Bulyubash, right in the clerks - this is a Ukrainian folk song and the whole fabric of folk life, permeated through with music, with its theatrical rites, holidays, laments. The folklore passions of the young Lysenko found a sincere response and support from his uncles - Andrei Romanovich and Alexander Zakharovich. Alexander Zakharovich played the bandura perfectly, was fond of Cossack antiquity and Ukrainian history.

The final realization of national self-determination of N. Lysenko took place at the age of 14, when, as a guest with his second cousin Mikhail Staritsky at his uncle Andrey Romanovich, they spent the whole night reading the forbidden poems of Taras Shevchenko rewritten in a notebook, carried away by “both the form, and the word, and the boldness of the content” ... “Lysenko, accustomed to Russian or French speech, was especially struck and fascinated by the sonority and power of a simple popular word", - recalled M. Staritsky.

The main contribution of N. V. Lysenko to the national culture is the collection of treasures folk music, researching and processing them, returning them to the people “in an exquisite artistic setting” and developing a national musical professional language based on folk melos.

N. Lysenko makes his first steps in music as a pianist - first in the Kyiv boarding houses of Guedouin and Weil, where he studies with the Czechs K. Neinkivch and the extremely popular Kyiv teacher and performer Panochchini (Aloyziy Ponotsny). Further - in the Kharkov 2nd gymnasium - J. Vilchek and the famous Russian pianist and composer Nikolai Dmitriev became his teachers. In Kharkov, young Lysenko even begins to give concerts in chamber meetings (both as a soloist and in an ensemble with teachers and fellow students) in the house of Fyodor Golitsyn, trustee of the Kharkov educational district. concert activity as a pianist, N. V. Lysenko will lead in this way from the age of 14–15 until the end of his life: about 55 years.

In 1860, N. Lysenko entered the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Kharkov University, where M. Staritsky had already studied. From the next academic year, they are forced, in order to avoid repression after student unrest in Kharkov, to transfer to Kiev University. Here, young men fall into the circle of progressive students, which made up the so-called Kyiv "Old Mass". N. Lysenko gets acquainted with Tadey Rylsky, Boris Poznansky, Pyotr Kosach, Mikhail Drahomanov and his sister Olga, Vladimir Antonovich, Pavel Zhitetsky and many others, whose selfless service to the national idea determined the political and cultural development Ukraine in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries.

In Kyiv, Lysenko continues to intensively study music. Under the influence of the program outlined by the Staraya Hromada, he begins to collect and process folk songs, works on the Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language and translations of public textbooks, creates a student choir of Kiev University (which has existed since 1864 to this day), which begins to perform folk songs in his arrangements; takes part in student performances, creating, in particular, in 1864. musical accompaniment to V. Gogol's (father's) vaudeville "The Simpleton".

Together with Staritsky, in 1863 they made their first attempt to write an opera - the folk musical drama "Garkusha" based on the plot of Oleksa Storozhenko's story.

At the same time, Lysenko performed as a pianist in concerts in favor of the Kiev branch of the Russian Musical Society, which was being created at that time, performing with great success not only extremely complex solo works, but also the 2nd concerto of F. Chopin and other works for piano and orchestra; participates in the choir of the RMO at the first production in Kyiv of fragments of M. Glinka's opera "Ivan Susanin".

Therefore, it is not surprising that, having graduated from the university with brilliance and having defended his Ph.D. thesis in 1865, Nikolai Lysenko still chooses music and goes in 1867 to the Leipzig Conservatory. Having entered there as a pianist, he simultaneously listens to lectures on theoretical disciplines and composition from leading German professors. Limited financial opportunities (after the abolition of serfdom, Lysenko found himself in a difficult situation, and Nikolai was even expelled from the university due to non-payment of tuition in his second year) makes him comprehend the conservatory course in two years. N. Lysenko becomes the first in Ukraine and one of the few composers among his generation Russian Empire who had a European vocational education.

In Leipzig, Lysenko published his first works - the piano Suite on the Themes of Folk Songs in the Form of Old Dances, the first two Collections of Arrangements of Ukrainian Folk Songs for Voice with Piano Accompaniment. During his life, he will publish 7 such collections of 40 songs, 12 "Choral Dozens" (arrangements for the choir); ceremonial collections: “Kolomyyki”, “Carols, Shchedrivka”, two “Wreaths of stoneflies”, “Wedding”, “Kupalska on the right”, over 500 arrangements for voice and choirs in total; two special collections for young people - "Molodoshi" and "Collection of Ukrainian folk songs in choral layout, adapted for students of younger and older age in folk schools".

At the same time, in Leipzig, the composer also published the first issue of Nikolay Lysenko's Music for Taras Shevchenko's Kobzar. This is one of the pinnacles of his work. Ivan Franko wrote: “Among Lysenko’s own compositions, among his operas and operettas, his best and most talented compositions for many of Shevchenko’s poems, in which he felt the musicality of the verse deeper, and managed to reflect it better than all the other numerous composers who were attracted by the muse Shevchenko. And the outstanding Western Ukrainian composer of the XX century. Stanislav Lyudkevich called these works "truthful pearls through and through the original Lysenko's work."

Over 90 times the composer turned to Kobzar's poems, interpreting them as vocal miniatures (sometimes whole extended vocal scenes, as, for example, “Pray, brethren, pray” from the poem “Gaidamaki”), then as extended cantatas like “Thresholds Beat”, or “On eternal memory Kotlyarevsky”, then as a capella choirs, either accompanied by a piano or an orchestra, like “Ivan Hus”, then as vocal ensembles. Some of the works of Lysenko's "Music to Kobzar" have become truly folk songs almost from their very inception, such as, say, "Oh, I'm alone, alone as a blade of grass in the field" or "A cherry garden near the house."

T. Shevchenko's poetry, like a wreath, frames the composer's work. Having already quite significant works, like Opus No. 1, he designated the “Testament”, written in Leipzig (1868) at the request of the Lvov partnership “Prosvita”, (“Enlightenment”), and latest work composer, created literally on the eve of his death, became the choir "God, with our ears ..." ("David's Psalm").

Vocal works were written by N. Lysenko and the texts of other poets, one of them - in Russian - "Confession" for 4 lines from a poem by S. Nadson. This miniature was a gift on the last birthday of a seriously ill poet who lived in a dacha in Boyarka next to the Lysenko family.

Of particular note in Lysenko's legacy is the first in Ukrainian music vocal cycle(13 romances and 2 duets) to verses by H. Heine in Ukrainian rehashings by Lesya Ukrainka, Maxim Slavinsky, Lyudmila Staritskaya-Chernyakhovsky and N. V. Lysenko himself. It is this cycle that includes one of his most famous works in the world - the duet "When two part". The vocal and choral heritage of N. V. Lysenko, in addition to three cantatas and 18 choirs to Shevchenko's texts, includes 12 original choral works on texts Ukrainian poets. And two of them - funeral march” to the text of Lesya Ukrainka and the cantata “On the 50th anniversary of the death of T. Shevchenko” are also dedicated to the Kobzar.

In general, work to perpetuate the memory of T. Shevchenko from his student years to last breath was the basis of Lysenko's social and educational activities. IN Lately it is documented that the composer did not take part in the reburial of Kobzar. But his contribution to the continuation of the Shevchenko cause is much more important: following the poet, Lysenko gave all creative life in order to “enlighten the dumb slaves”, in order to raise a single nation worthy of its heroic past and capable of creating its own future from the Ukrainian people torn apart by two empires.

Since 1862, N. Lysenko annually organizes concerts in memory of T. Shevchenko, which, by the way, creates a new concert form - a mixed concert. Lysenko himself performs in these concerts as a pianist and choir conductor. His arrangements and author's works, compositions of other authors on the texts of Shevchenko and other poets, T. Shevchenko's poems and fragments from performances based on his works sound. Nowadays, such a concert form is common for us. But in Ukraine, it originates precisely from Lysenko's concerts.

At the end of his life, in 1908, N. V. Lysenko headed the first legal Ukrainian socio-political organization "The Kiev Ukrainian Club", as well as the first all-Ukrainian organization founded in 1906 - "The Joint Committee for the Construction of the Monument to T. G. Shevchenko in Kiev”, which received funds from concerts and charitable contributions from Australia, America, Canada, not to mention the whole of Europe. The last action in this Lysenko work was a program timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the death of Taras Shevchenko. Due to harassment by the tsarist administration, headed by the Kyiv Governor-General V. Trepov and the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire P. Stolypin, the event was moved from Kyiv to Moscow. The consequence of this was the opening of the police “Case on the closure of the Kyiv Ukrainian Club” and “bringing members of the Council of Elders, headed by music teacher Nikolai Vitalyevich Lysenko, to criminal liability for anti-government activities.” Four days after the announcement of this decision, N. V. Lysenko died of a heart attack.

One of the points of accusation brought against N. V. Lysenko was his extensive educational activities, including choral activities.

Sergey Efremov in his obituary "Intimate Power" (newspaper "Rada", 10/29/1912) writes that "art, with light hand of the deceased, it was […] as if that advanced detachment, the vanguard of Ukrainians, which prepared the way for other national forms and aspirations.

This is the main meaning of all Lysenko's musical and social activities, including his work with choirs, and his four "choral trips" around Ukraine (1893, 1897, 1899, 1902). Throughout his life, Lysenko gathered in his choirs "not just tenors and basses, but above all conscious Ukrainians." It is not surprising that the police reports say: "It is rather not a choir, but a circle, the most harmful in terms of politics." On such a charge, the Kyiv administration closed the Choral Society, founded by Lysenko in 1871-1872.

In general, N.V. Lysenko, wherever he could, tried to rally people, especially artistic youth, around the national idea. So it was with the Kyiv Literary and Artistic Society. Opened in 1895 as an outpost of Russian culture, it gradually turned into a center for the promotion of the Ukrainian idea and national culture, for which it was closed in 1905.

For the same purpose, with the light hand of Lysenko, the Young Literature circle, better known as the Pleiad of Young Ukrainian Writers, arose, which gave a start to the life of Lesya Ukrainka, Lyudmila Staritskaya-Chernyakhovsky, Maxim Slavinsky, Sergey Efremov, Vladimir Samiylenko and many other talented writers and public figures of the early 20th century.

An equally important contribution to the development of Ukrainian culture was the theatrical activity of N. V. Lysenko. He is one of the founders of the Ukrainian professional theater, including the opera.

Having begun in 1863 with an unfinished attempt to write the folk heroic opera Garkusha, Lysenko, returning from Leipzig, writes (again with M. Staritsky) the operetta Chernomortsy, which they successfully staged at the premises of the Lindfors sisters on Fundukleevsky (now Street B . Khmelnitsky) by an amateur circle of M. Staritsky - N. Lysenko in 1872

An outstanding event in Ukrainian culture was their next joint work - the operetta "Christmas Night" (later revised into a 4-act opera). The premiere of "Christmas Night" performed by an amateur circle on the stage of the Kyiv City Theater on January 24, 1874 became the birthday of the Ukrainian opera house. Leading parts were sung by Olga Alexandrovna Lysenko-O'Connor, who, having married N. V. Lysenko, studied with him in Leipzig (Oksana), Alexander Rusov (Vakula), Stanislav Gabel (Patsyuk).

The organizers of the performance, among whom were M. Dragomanov, P. Chubinsky, F. Vovk, the Lindfors family, O. Rusov and other members of the Staraya Hromada, openly declared their political sympathies: right in front of the audience in the center of the scenery, which was the interior of the Ukrainian of the hut, in the center of the mother that supported the roof, the date of the defeat of the Zaporizhzhya Sich by the tsarist troops was “cut out”. Actually, the premiere itself took place exactly 200 years after that tragic event for Ukraine. It is not surprising that until the end of his days, N. Lysenko will be under vigilant police surveillance.

Lysenko wrote 11 operas, and collaborating with the leading troupes of the Ukrainian theater, he created music for another 10 dramatic performances.

The history of the creation and production of operas by N. V. Lysenko is extremely diverse. So, without sufficient reason, it is considered the opera "Andriyashiada" - actually a compilation of popular melodies from classical operas and operettas, a kind of "skit" created on the libretto by M. Staritsky and M. Dragomanov on the occasion of the publication by the director of the 1st Kiev gymnasium Andriyashev of the notorious "People's Calendar ".

The composer never saw his main brainchild, the opera Taras Bulba, on the stage, despite P. I. Tchaikovsky's offer to assist in staging it on the Moscow stage. At the same time, Lysenko's Natalka Poltavka, which he actually did not write, is still extremely popular. The composer notes in the preface to the first edition (1886) that he only “ordered the clavier” of the most popular melodies that were used in the “folk play”, beloved since the time of I. Kotlyarevsky. That is, N. V. Lysenko wrote only a detailed piano accompaniment and an introduction to "Natalka Poltavka". The question of whether Lysenko himself orchestrated this opera is still open; in any case, no memoirs have been preserved of the existence of Lysenko's autograph of the score.

The rest of the big operas: the comic-lyrical, folklore "Christmas Night", the extravaganza "The Drowned Woman", the folk musical drama "Taras Bulba", the satire opera "Aeneid" were orchestrated by the composer himself. The first three Ukrainian children's operas "Koza-Dereza", "Pan Kotsky", "Winter and Spring", the extravaganza "Magic Dream", the opera in 2 acts "Sappho" and the last opera-minute "Nocturne" came to us in the clavier . Garkusha, Marusya Boguslavka, The Witch, and Summer Night remained unfinished. From recent letters composer, we learn that he began to work on a ballet ...

The stage life of N. V. Lysenko's operas continues today in various editions, the need for which is due primarily to the fact that, for all his talent, Lysenko was still not a "symphonist", which was not changed even by two years of study (1874-1876) in St. Petersburg N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. Perhaps the reason was that N. Lysenko had very little to work with the orchestra.

At the same time, in choral works and in choral conducting, Lysenko reached heights unsurpassed in his time. Suffice it to recall such a pearl of choral polyphony as "The fog falls in waves" from the opera "The Drowned Woman". Choral conductors and composers were also his best students - Alexander Koshits, Kirill Stetsenko, Yakov Yatsinevich.

There are almost no symphonic works in N.V. Lysenko's heritage: an unfinished "youthful" symphony - a student work of the period of study in Leipzig, an overture on the theme of the song "Oh, the Cossack washed down", which later became part of the operetta "Chernomortsy", "Russian pizzicato" and an orchestral version piano fantasy "Cossack-Shumka" A little from the composer and chamber instrumental ensembles: Quartet and Trio Leipzig period and several pieces for violin, cello, flute with piano accompaniment, written at the request of fellow musicians M. Sicard, O. Shevchik, V. Khimichenko, who gave many concerts with Lysenko.

One of the best virtuoso pianists of his time, Lysenko created more than 50 piano pieces. On Christmas Day 1867, N. Lysenko, a student at the Leipzig Conservatory, presented his own piano arrangements of 10 Ukrainian folk songs in Prague in the hall of the Craftsman's Conversation with great success. Unfortunately, only one of them has come down to us - “Oh, don’t be surprised, good people what happened in Ukraine. He completed the Leipzig Conservatory with a brilliant performance of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto with his own cadenza, which German magazines respectfully wrote about. NV Lysenko wrote the first piano rhapsodies in Ukrainian music: Golden Keys (1875) and Dumka-Shumka (1877). His legacy includes preludes, waltzes, nocturnes, mazurkas, marches and polonaises, songs without words. These works in the author's performance sounded especially expressive. L. Staritskaya-Chernyakhovskaya wrote that with the death of Lysenko, his piano works "half died." “It was impossible to compare his playing with anyone else ... For example, I have never heard a better performance of Schumann’s “Aufschwung’a” (“Impulse”). If he performed his own and generally Ukrainian things, it was something extraordinary - some kind of Yevshan potion ... Millennia came to life in his playing ... And a deep, gray-haired, Slavic antiquity. Inspirational, ardent, with the force of a lion's paw, with a proud look, he was completely transformed. In life, meek, affectionate, at the piano - Prophetic Boyan.

Kyiv at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries.

Performed by Lysenko the pianist, as well as chamber ensembles with his participation, soloists and choirs under his direction, not only his own and other Ukrainian authors of the work sounded, but also worldwide famous masterpieces Western European and Russian composers. The huge pianistic and choir repertoire that sounded in N. Lysenko's concerts gives grounds to assert that he not only laid the foundations of Ukrainian professional performance, but tried by all means to lead the listeners "out of the farm environment into the broadest European world."

N. Lysenko almost did not write sacred music (because, perhaps, he would have to write in Russian texts, which he avoided in principle all his life). But among the six now known religious works of Lysenko, extremely beautiful and permeated with high spirituality, there is such a masterpiece as choral concert“Where can I go from your face, Lord?”, Cherubic song, chant “The Most Pure Virgin, Mother of the Russian Territory”, which are performed nowadays by almost all choirs of Ukraine and the Diaspora.

Lysenko's life feat is not limited to writing musical works. The development of performance was also important for him, and not only in his time: it was N. V. Lysenko who laid the foundations for professional creative education in Ukraine, opening in Kiev in 1904 his Music and Drama School, which, in addition to music, had departments Ukrainian and Russian drama, and the first class in the Russian Empire to play folk instruments - the bandura class, which, with all the complexity of its organization, gave its first release in April 1911. Over time, the Lysenko Music and Drama Institute grew out of the Lysenko School - leading creative university in Ukraine in 1918–1934. Graduates of Muzdramin them. M.V. Lysenko laid the foundations for the achievements of Ukrainian culture of the 20th century.

It is no coincidence, as we see, that in 1903 the celebration of the 35th anniversary creative activity N. V. Lysenko turned into a demonstration of the greatness of the entire Ukrainian culture and united the nation from peasants to creative intelligentsia, from Russified officials to political emigrants.

The funeral of the Father of Ukrainian music also became an open political demonstration. According to A. Koshyts, about 1200 choristers sang alone. For the first time, young people dressed in student overcoats guarded the national shrine, surrounding the participants in the funeral procession with a chain and preventing the police from making arrests.

The most profound definition of the role of N. V. Lysenko in the history of Ukraine belongs to S. Efremov, who was formed as a writer and public figure in Lysenko's circle. He wrote in his obituary: “Music connoisseurs, experts will undoubtedly give us a detailed assessment of Lysenko as a composer and creator, find out what he was among musicians. But for us, a wide circle of his followers, this image of an eternally young soul, which was the Intimate Force of the Ukrainian movement, its fire and living connection, which gathered the disparate into a single circle, and from here, from the center revived everyone with a single mind's eye.

However main award N.V. Lysenko is still not just a tribute to the memory and worship of descendants, but the fact that it was he who was destined to become the author of two national anthems that affirm the spiritual greatness of Man and the People.

The first of them is "The Eternal Revolutionary" (1905) to the verses of I. Franko ( for a long time exploited by the Soviet authorities without proper reason, although the Anthem glorifies the spiritual revolution, and not the communist coup).

The second - "Children's Hymn" to the verses of A. Konissky (1885): the now world-famous "Prayer for Ukraine" - "God the Great, the One!", Which since 1992 has been the official anthem of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate) and has actually become second national anthem independent Ukraine.

Oscar LEVANT (1906–1972) American pianist and composer There are two points of view on every question: wrong and mine. * * * As soon as I decide on something, indecision takes possession of me. * * * Marriage is the triumph of habit over hate. * * * I keep in my soul how