Mykola Leontovych

Composer from Ukraine
1877, December 13th in Monastyrok, Ukraine - 1921, January 23rd in Markivka, Ukraine

Mykola Leontovych (1877-1921) was a Ukrainian composer, choral conductor, ethnomusicologist and teacher, best known worldwide for Shchedryk, the choral setting of a Ukrainian New Year folk chant that became the Carol of the Bells. Born on 13 December 1877 in Monastyrok, in the Podolia Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Vinnytsia Oblast), the son of a priest, he graduated from the Podolia Theological Seminary in Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1899 and later studied at the Court Capella in Saint Petersburg (1903-1904). He worked for years as a village schoolteacher and choir director in Podolia and the Donbas, collecting and arranging folk songs, and from 1909 took lessons with the music theorist Boleslav Yavorsky. He was strongly influenced by Mykola Lysenko and by his close friend Kyrylo Stetsenko. Shchedryk, completed in 1914 and first performed in Kyiv in December 1916, was carried around the world by Oleksandr Koshyts and the Ukrainian Republic Capella, and in 1936 Peter J. Wilhousky published the English-language version Carol of the Bells. After 1918 Leontovych taught in Kyiv at the Conservatory and the Mykola Lysenko Institute of Music and Drama and was active in the Ukrainisation of Orthodox church music, composing one of the first liturgies in modern Ukrainian, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1919). He left more than 150 works, mostly a cappella choral arrangements of folk songs such as Dudaryk, and an unfinished opera, Na rusalchyn velykden. On 23 January 1921 he was shot dead by a Soviet security agent at his parents' home in Markivka, where he is buried. He is sometimes called the Ukrainian Bach and is venerated as a martyr by the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Source: Rondo DB

Usual Name Mykola Leontovych
Alternative Spellings Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych; Nikolai Leontovich; Mykola Leontovich; Микола Дмитрович Леонтович
On Wikipedia Mykola_Leontovych
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Title Subname Catalogue Key Year Type

Born in Ukraine – 150 Years of Ukrainian Music

2026-11-06

Deutsche Grammophon (DG)