Mykola Vitaliiovych Lysenko was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist of the late Romantic period. In his time he was the central figure of Ukrainian music, with an oeuvre that includes operas, art songs, choral works, orchestral and chamber pieces, and a wide variety of solo piano music. He is often credited with founding a national music tradition during the Ukrainian national revival, in the vein of contemporaries such as Grieg in Norway, The Five in Russia as well as Smetana and Dvořák in what is now the Czech Republic.
Mykola Lysenko, c. 1900
Lysenko in 1865
Mykola Lysenko's grave at Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv.
Ukrainian music covers diverse and multiple component elements of the music that is found in the Western and Eastern musical civilization. It also has a very strong indigenous Slavic and Christian uniqueness whose elements were used among the areas that surround modern Ukraine.
The Kobzars Kravchenko and Dremchenko (1902)
Soviet postage stamp depicting traditional Ukrainian musical instruments
Ostap Veresai, the most famous Ukrainian kobzar of the 19th century, and his wife Kulyna
Mykola Lysenko