Микола Леонтович

Shchedryk, a Ukrainian New Year chant of four notes, arranged by him for unaccompanied choir over some twenty years and first sung in Kyiv in 1916, reached the United States with the Ukrainian National Chorus and became, with an English text by Peter Wilhousky, Carol of the Bells. A priest's son from Podolia, he studied at the Kamianets-Podilskyi seminary, taught in provincial schools and built his output almost entirely from folk song. He was shot at his father's house in 1921, at forty-three. He continued his training at the Court Capella in Saint Petersburg and privately with Boleslav Yavorsky, and took his bearings from Mykola Lysenko and the Ukrainian national school. After the revolution of 1917 he settled in Kyiv and worked at the Conservatory and at the Mykola Lysenko Institute of Music and Drama. Beside the folk arrangements he wrote church music, among it the first liturgy set in the modern Ukrainian vernacular.