The Life of Kyrylo Stetsenko

By Wasyl Sydorenko

Kyrylo Stetsenko was born in central Ukraine in 1882. His father was a painter of icons and his maternal uncle, an Orthodox priest.

At age 10, Kyrylo was taken by his uncle to Kyiv to study art. There, he enrolled at Saint Sophia’s Church School and later at the Seminary. Kyrylo studied the masters of Ukrainian church music- Dmytro Bortniansky, Maksym Berezovsky, Artem Vedel, and others. He also met Mykola Lysenko, the most important Ukrainian composer of the time.

When he completed his studies in 1903, Stetsenko chose not to become a priest. Instead, he began working as a music teacher, music critic, church conductor and composer. Stetsenko has to his credit 42 art songs, over 100 sacred and secular choral pieces, including two liturgies and a requiem, and music to a dozen stage works. Political events constantly affected the composer’s life.

When the Russian Revolution of 1905 fanned the flames of independence in Ukraine, Stetsenko published the Ukrainian national anthem and other patriotic songs. Although the authorities could not prove his complicity, he was nevertheless exiled from Kyiv in 1907.

By 1909 he returned to Kyiv but political and economic pressures forced him to leave one year later. In 1911, urged by his uncle, Stetsenko decided to become an Orthodox priest. Financial security, however, came at a price. The composer was required to serve in an obscure village in south-western Ukraine, far from the cultural life of Kyiv. There, in his self-imposed exile, Stetsenko weathered the political storm of the First World War.

At the start of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stetsenko returned to Kyiv. When the Ukrainian National Republic was declared, he was appointed head of the Music Section in the Ministry of Education. Two national choirs were created. One choir, led by composer Oleksander Koshetz, toured Europe and North America to promote Ukraine as an independent nation. The other, led by Stetsenko, toured at home to promote national unity.  With the Bolshevik takeover of Ukraine in 1920, the Koshetz choir was stranded abroad. Meanwhile, Stetsenko’s choir was disbanded by the Communists and the composer abandoned Kyiv to serve as a village priest south of the city.

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