Nikolai Leontovich short biography. Leontovich, Nikolai Dmitrievich Music editions of Leontovich's works

December 01, 1877 - January 23, 1921

Ukrainian composer, choir conductor, public figure, teacher

Biography

Born on December 1, 1877 in the village of Monastyrok, Bratslav district, Podolsk province, in the family of a village priest. Early childhood was spent in the village of Shershnyakh, Tyvrovsky volost, Vinnitsa district. Leontovich received his primary musical education from his father, who played the cello, violin, guitar, and for some time led the choir of seminarians.

In 1887 Leontovich entered the Nemirov Gymnasium. In 1888, for lack of funds, his father transferred him to the Shargorod Primary Theological School, where the pupils were kept on full board. At the school, he mastered singing from notes, and could freely read complex parts in church choral works.

In 1892, Leontovich entered the Podolsk Theological Seminary in Kamenetz-Podolsk, where he studied music theory and choral singing, mastered the violin, piano, some wind instruments, began to process folk melodies, taking Nikolai Lysenko as a model.

In 1898, Leontovich graduated from the seminary and decided to work as a teacher in rural schools and at the same time improve his musical education on his own. In the village of Chukovi, he organized an amateur symphony orchestra, which performed Ukrainian melodies and plays by Russian and Ukrainian composers. In 1901 he published the first collection of songs from Podolia. In 1903, the second collection of Podolsk songs was published with a dedication to M. Lysenko.

In the autumn of 1904, he left Podolia and moved to the Donbass, where he got a job as a teacher of singing and music at a local railway school. During the 1905 revolution, Leontovich organized a workers' choir that performed at rallies. Leontovich's activities attracted the attention of the police, and he was forced to return to Podolia, to the city of Tulchin, where he taught music and singing at the Tulchin diocesan women's school for the daughters of rural priests. Since 1909, Leontovich has been studying under the guidance of the famous music theorist B. Yavorsky, whom he periodically visits in Moscow and Kyiv.

At that time, he created many choral arrangements, in particular the famous “Shchedryk”, as well as “Drink the roosters”, “Mother is small for one daughter”, “Dudarik”, “Oh, the dawn has risen”, etc. In Tulchin, he met the composer Kirill Stetsenko. In 1916, together with the choir of Kyiv University, he performed his adaptation of Shchedryk, which brought him great success with the Kyiv public.

With the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic, Leontovich moved from Tulchin to Kyiv, where he began active work as a conductor and composer. A number of his works were included in their repertoire by professional and amateur groups of Ukraine. At one of the concerts, "Legend" by Nikolai Voronoi in the processing of Leontovich was a great success. After the arrival of the Bolsheviks, Leontovich worked for some time in the music committee at the People's Commissariat of Education, taught at the Music and Drama Institute. N. Lysenko, together with the composer and conductor G. Verevka, works at the People's Conservatory, in pre-school education courses, and organizes several choral circles.

During the capture of Kyiv on August 31, 1919 by the Denikinites, who were pursuing the Ukrainian intelligentsia, he was forced to flee to Tulchin. Founds the first music school in Tulchin. in 1919-1920 he worked on the first major symphonic work - the folk-fiction opera "On Easter Mermaids" based on the fairy tale of the same name by B. Grinchenko. In the autumn of 1920, the choir chapel went on tour in Tulchin under the direction of K. Stetsenko and Pavel Tychyna as the second conductor. During the concerts of the chapel, Leontovich's works were performed. In the last months of his life, Leontovich was finishing the opera On the Mermaid Easter.

Ukrainian pedagogy in faces - XIX century / Edited by A.V. Sukhomlinsky / textbook for students of higher educational institutions, in two books / / "Lybid", - K., 2005, book. 1. S. 545 - 551.

Leontovich

Nikolai Dmitrievich

Composer,

choir conductor,

Public figure

Nikolai Dmitrievich Leontovich was born on December 1, 1877 in the village of Selevintsi (according to the latest archival data, it was a suburb of the village of Monastyrek, which was previously considered the birthplace of the composer) of the Bratslav district of the Nemirov volost of the Podolsk province (now Vinnitsa region). He was the first-born in a large family of a village priest and teacher. Father, Dmitry Feofanovich Leontovich, came from a family of ancestral ministers of the church, but, like his grandfather-great-grandfather, he combined the performance of spiritual services with teaching. The Leontovich family brought up educated people who were not indifferent to the life and culture of Ukraine.

Mykola Leontovich's childhood passed in the village of Shershen' in the Tyvrovsky volost, where his father was transferred to a new place of service in the summer of 1879. It was in the family circle that he joined musical folklore and Ukrainian songwriting. The father of the future composer played several string instruments (zither, balalaika, violin, guitar), and his mother knew many songs and sang well. Musical evenings were often held in the house. Little Kolya not only got used to listening to, and later to singing songs, but also picked up folk melodies on musical instruments. From an early age, his creative destiny was revealed: he organized his younger brothers and sisters into a choir and they arranged family concerts in front of numerous relatives and peasants. Thus, even before studying at school, Kolya had a certain musical background.

Father, Dmitry Feofanovich Leontovich, dreamed of a solid secular education for his eldest son - in 1887 he gave him to the preparatory class of the Nemirovskaya gymnasium. But, burdened with a family, the poor village priest was not able to pay for his education, and from January of the following year the boy moved to the first grade of the Shargorod theological school, where the priest's children studied for free. In 1892, having received high marks in musical singing, calligraphy, geography, Greek, young Leontovich completed his primary education and continued his studies at the Kamyanets-Podilsky Theological Seminary in the same year. It is known from memoirs and archival sources that he was little interested in theological sciences, but he was fond of literature and psychology, and most of all he loved and conscientiously studied singing and music. Fortunately for the student, musical subjects at the seminary were taught by a highly educated teacher Yu.O. Bogdanov, who received his musical education at the St. Petersburg Court Chapel, was an active collector of folk songs, published a collection of choral arrangements of more than 100 melodies recorded by him in the villages of Podolia and Volhynia. As a musician-educator, the teacher tried not only to give his students special professional knowledge and instill a love for music, but also to educate them as good singing teachers who brought art to the people. It was under his leadership that Nikolai Leontovich made the first attempts to transcribe and his own processing of folk songs (“Ganja”, “The sun rises beyond Siberia”), gradually accumulating song material for future pedagogical work. Already in 1898, he was assigned to lead the choir of seminarians, and he got the opportunity to master the art of directing the choir and orchestra. In an effort to expand the scope of the Seminary, Nikolai Dmitrievich Leontovich selected material not of a spiritual direction, but of a secular one, for which he was subsequently punished: he was removed from the leadership and left for a second year. Forced to continue his studies, the seminarian began to collect musical folklore in villages and towns even more actively, preparing for professional work.

The beginning of the teaching activity of Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovich fell on the period of activation of the national-democratic educational movement in the Ukrainian lands, when the nationally conscious intelligentsia waged a stubborn struggle for the recognition of the inherent value of the Ukrainian language and culture, for native teaching. Young Nikolai Leontovich also made his contribution to this movement, who on September 1, 1899 took the position of “teacher of singing ***, arithmetic and geography” of the Chukivsky two-year parish school in Podolia.

ZhZL: Nikolai Dmitrievich Leontovich

Even if you are absolutely sure that you have never heard a single melody of this composer, do not rush to conclusions. One of his tunes became so popular that you couldn't help but hear it. This is a very popular Christmas tune, which is called differently in different countries. In Ukraine, it is called "Shchedryk", and in English-speaking countries "Christmas Carol of the Bells".

The talented composer Nikolai Dmitrievich Leontovich infinitely loved Ukrainian folk art, and devoted his life to its study and preservation. But his life was tragic. He was killed by Chekists in 1921.

Nikolai Dmitrievich Leontovich

Nikolai Dmitrievich Leontovich is a talented composer, choir conductor, folklorist, teacher and public figure, a deep connoisseur of folk art, he wrote a bright page in the history of Ukrainian music. Nikolai Leontovich was born on December 13, 1877 in the village of Monastyrek, Bratslav district in Podolia (now Vinnitsa region) in the family of a village priest. From childhood he loved folk singing. His father played various musical instruments, his mother knew many Ukrainian songs and skillfully performed them.

According to family traditions, Nikolai was supposed to become a priest - that's what his parents wanted, so he was sent to study at the Shargorod Primary Theological School, and then - at the Kamenetz-Podolsk Theological Seminary. In the school and seminary, the young man was primarily attracted by musical notation and choral singing. Here he first begins to record folk songs, sings in the choir. During this period, he persistently mastered playing the piano and violin, studied musical literature, got acquainted with the biography of outstanding composers. He is especially attracted to choral arrangements of folk songs by Nikolai Lysenko. The musical formation of Leontovich was also influenced by the fast cultural life of the administrative center of the Podolsk province - Kamyanets-Podilsky. Troupes came to the city on tour, staged operas by Verdi, Bizet, Glinka, Tchaikovsky. The leadership of the seminary did not encourage the seminarians to become interested in the theater, but Nikolai used every opportunity to attend the performance.

The musical successes of the young seminarian were quite tangible, which gave him the opportunity to take the place of regent of the seminary choir even before receiving his diploma. His talent developed rapidly. He was not only the leader of the choir, but also tried himself as a composer - it was here that he began to write his first spiritual works. The choir singers, who were delighted with the young musician, presented him with a clavier of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's opera "Cherevichki" with a dedicatory inscription: "To the future glorious composer, unforgettable regentsifrom the choir of singers. After graduating from the seminary in 1899, N. Leontovich abandoned the priesthood and worked for several years as a teacher of singing, arithmetic and geography at the Chukovsky two-class school. But, as before, music remained at the center of his interests. He led the student choir, organized a symphony orchestra, the repertoire of which consisted of works by Western European and Russian classics, plays by Ukrainian composers, as well as folk songs arranged by him. In 1902, Leontovich moved to Vinnitsa, where he got a job as a teacher in a church teacher's school. As in Chukovi, he creates a student choir, directs a spiritual orchestra. For choristers he processes folk songs. These wonderful arrangements of Ukrainian songs entered the treasury of the Ukrainian musical heritage. Eternal teacher and eternal student - these are the words that can define the position of Leontovich the teacher and Leontovich the artist. The composer paid special attention to self-education. The need to systematize and strengthen the knowledge acquired independently led him to the St. Petersburg Court Chapel, where during the school holidays of 1903-1904 he passed the exams for the title of regent of church choirs.

Mykola Leontovich became a teacher of a whole generation of Ukrainian musicians, because by the power of talent he condensed in his work the choral and song practice of the people and the artistic opinion of his predecessors and contemporaries. Folk art revealed to him the finest features of the national character, the beauty of his creative spirit, and forever determined Leontovich's civic credo. In one of his notes, he emphasized that for a true artist, the life goal should be to work at full strength under any circumstances. By personal example, the composer proved the inseparable unity of word and deed, boundless devotion to the cause to which he devoted himself.

Since the autumn of 1904, Nikolai Leontovich has been working at the railway school at the Grishino station (now Krasnoarmeysk) in the Donbass. In a short period of time, he organized singing classes there, created a choir and an instrumental ensemble consisting of railway workers and members of their families. In 1905, fate returns Leontovich to his native land. He settled in Tulchin, got a job as a teacher in a diocesan school. Here he works with amateur choirs, continues to record and harmonize folk songs. By that time, he had already combined his musical attempts into two printed collections, "Songs from Podolia".

During this period, Leontovich perfectly mastered the techniques and means of choral technique in the process of live singing. The composer did a lot to preserve the originality of folk art for future generations, to protect it from the stamps of salon performance. Turning to the same work for many years, Leontovich opened up new facets of the song, gave it a new unique flavor. The best examples of his choral adaptations, built on folk song material, are the unforgettable "Shchedryk", "Dudarik", "They carry a Cossack", "Oh, from behind a stone mountain", "A lishchinonka made a noise", "It is not enough to have one daughter". These and other arrangements by Leontovich were widely used by the people, often performed in concerts of folk amateur and professional choirs.

The artist's creative credo could be formulated as follows: folk art gave him its treasures, and he polished them and returned them to their creators in the form of precious stones. However, this bright, very original in creative style master of Ukrainian choral music was not known to the general public, and only after the successful performance of the folk song "Shchedryk" in its arrangement by the student choir of Kyiv University under the direction of Alexander Koshyts, the name of the Podolsky teacher became known in musical circles. In 1909, N. Leontovich moved to Kyiv, where he led choirs, taught at the Music and Drama Institute. Mykola Lysenko, works in the music department of the Kyiv Regional Committee and in the All-Ukrainian Committee of Arts, heads the created state orchestra, communicates with famous scientists, musicians (Professor B. Yavorsky, singer L. Sobinov, conductors-composers Y. Stepovoy, Y. Kalishevsky).

Engaged in active musical, organizational and pedagogical activities, N. Leontovich, however, does not leave the composer's work. In addition to adaptations of folk songs, he writes works based on the words of modern Ukrainian poets: "My Song", "Summer Tones", "Ice Dome", "Legend", begins to work on an opera with a fabulous plot of "mermaids", which he never finished.

The Ukrainian revolution of 1917-1920, the moment of the formation of the Ukrainian state, Leontovich met with enthusiasm. He seemed to have added even more energy and strength. Together with other outstanding musical figures and composers - Kirill Stetsenko, Yakov Stepnoy, Alexander Koshyts - Leontovich plunges into a whirlpool of turbulent cultural and social life. It was at this time that state choirs were founded by their efforts: the Republican Chapel under the direction of Alexander Koshyts, the chapel "Dumka" (State Ukrainian Mandrivna Chapel) under the direction of Kirill Stetsenko; new amateur choirs are organized; the activities of the Musical-Theatrical Institute named after V.I. Lysenko; concert, publishing and musical educational activities are activated - all this was on the basis of the beginning of a new stage in the development of national musical culture.

The Bolshevik occupation stopped these movements. In fact, the Ukrainian revival was destroyed: the newly created national institutions were closed or "reorganized", prominent figures of Ukrainian culture and science were persecuted or physically destroyed. These were measures of a new policy, the slogan of which was "national culture in form, but Bolshevik in content." In practice, this meant the end of cultural development, national upsurge, the end of Ukrainian statehood. Since 1920, being on the "black list" of the Cheka, Leontovich was persecuted by the "organs". He had to hide, often change places of residence. Believing that he would be saved in his father's house, he settled with him. On the night of January 22-23, 1921, a sent Chekist killed him with a shot in the chest.

The truth about this villainous murder became known recently, after the opening of the archives. And in Soviet times, historians officially presented the fact of Leontovich's death as an accidental death at the hands of an unknown bandit, as an accident. Immediately after the death of Leontovich in 1921, a Public Committee in his memory was created in Kyiv, which included famous cultural figures - M. Verikivsky, Y. Stepovoy, P. Demutsky, D. Revutsky, G. Verevka, representatives of the musical and scientific community of Kyiv and Ukraine. Later, this committee became the Society. Leontovich, whose task was to study, issue, promote the work of an outstanding artist. Streets, creative organizations, professional and amateur choirs, conservatories are named after him. For the best students, a scholarship named after Leontovich was established, museums were created.

Biography

Born on December 1, 1877 in the village of Monastyrok, Bratslav district, Podolsk province, in the family of a village priest. Early childhood was spent in the village of Shershnyakh, Tyvrovsky volost, Vinnitsa district. Leontovich received his primary musical education from his father, who played the cello, violin, guitar, and for some time led the choir of seminarians.

In 1887 Leontovich entered the Nemirov Gymnasium. In 1888, for lack of funds, his father transferred him to the Shargorod Primary Theological School, where the pupils were kept on full board. At the school, he mastered singing from notes, and could freely read complex parts in church choral works.

In 1892, Leontovich entered the Podolsk Theological Seminary in Kamenetz-Podolsk, where he studied music theory and choral singing, mastered the violin, piano, some wind instruments, began to process folk melodies, taking Nikolai Lysenko as a model for processing.

In 1898, Leontovich graduated from the seminary and decided to work as a teacher in rural schools and at the same time improve his musical education on his own. In the village of Chukovi, he organized an amateur symphony orchestra, which performed Ukrainian melodies and plays by Russian and Ukrainian composers. In 1901 he published the first collection of songs from Podolia. In 1903, the second collection of Podolsk songs was published with a dedication to M. Lysenko.

In the autumn of 1904, he left Podolia and moved to the Donbass, where he got a job as a teacher of singing and music at a local railway school. During the 1905 revolution, Leontovich organized a workers' choir that performed at rallies. Leontovich's activities attracted the attention of the police, and he was forced to return to Podolia, to the city of Tulchin, where he taught music and singing at the Tulchin diocesan women's school for the daughters of rural priests. Since 1909, Leontovich has been studying under the guidance of the famous music theorist B. Yavorsky, whom he periodically visits in Moscow and Kyiv.

At that time, he created many choral arrangements, in particular the famous “Shchedryk”, as well as “Drinking the Roosters”, “Motherless One Daughter”, “Dudarik”, “Oh, the Dawn Has Risen”, etc. In Tulchin, he met the composer Kirill Stetsenko. In 1916, together with the choir of Kyiv University, he performed his adaptation of Shchedryk, which brought him great success with the Kyiv public.

With the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic, Leontovich moved from Tulchin to Kyiv, where he began active work as a conductor and composer. A number of his works were included in their repertoire by professional and amateur groups of Ukraine. At one of the concerts, "Legend" by Nikolai Voronoi in the processing of Leontovich was a great success. After the arrival of the Bolsheviks, Leontovich worked for some time in the music committee at the People's Commissariat of Education, taught at the Music and Drama Institute. N. Lysenko, together with the composer and conductor G. Verevka, works at the People's Conservatory, in pre-school education courses, and organizes several choral circles.

During the capture of Kyiv on August 31, 1919 by the Denikinites, who were pursuing the Ukrainian intelligentsia, he was forced to flee to Tulchin. Founds the first music school in Tulchin. in 1919-1920 he worked on the first major symphonic work - the folk-fiction opera "On Easter Mermaids" based on the fairy tale of the same name by B. Grinchenko. In the autumn of 1920, the choir chapel went on tour in Tulchin under the direction of K. Stetsenko and Pavel Tychyna as the second conductor. During the concerts of the chapel, Leontovich's works were performed. In the last months of his life, Leontovich was finishing the opera On the Mermaid Easter.

On the night of January 22-23, 1921, the composer was with his father in the village of Markovka, Gaysinsky district, where he was killed by an agent of the Gaysinsky district Cheka, Afanasy Grishchenko, who asked to spend the night in the house, calling himself a Chekist who was fighting banditry. In the morning, the killer robbed the house, shooting Nikolai Leontovich and tying the hands of the composer's family. The text of the report revealing the name of the composer's killer was made public only in the 1990s.

Creation

The basis of Leontovich's musical heritage is choral miniatures - arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs, which are unsurpassed to this day and are performed by all Ukrainian choirs in Ukraine and the Diaspora. These are the pearls of folk melos “Shchedryk”, “They Carry a Cossack”, “Dudarik”, “Snowball Flies from Behind the Mountain”, “Jenchichok-Brenchichok”, “Guy, Guy, Green Rose” and many others marked by the great talent of the composer. On the basis of Ukrainian folk melodies, Leontovich created completely original original choral compositions, artistically rethinking them comprehensively, providing them with a unique sound. Leontovich was one of the first masters of Ukrainian music who interpreted folklore in a new way, using the musical achievements of European musical and choral culture. At the same time, Leontovich's handwriting stands out among others for its extreme flexibility and naturalness of the movement of voices, jewelry polishing of details. Leontovich successfully used the traditions of improvisation in the work of Ukrainian kobza players, who interpreted each new stanza of the song text in a new way. Leontovich used timbre variation in the performance of folk rhapsodies in his arrangements, providing the choir with the opportunity to reveal a huge variety of harmony and counterpoint. Consistently embodying the idea of ​​harmonization and polyphony in his adaptations, Leontovich, having a deep and versatile musical education, widely used the best achievements of the world choral technique.

The themes of the composer's choral miniatures are extremely diverse. These are ritual, church, historical, Chumatsky, comic, dance, game songs. One of the central places in the work of Leontovich is occupied by choirs on everyday topics. These are, in particular, “Oh, in the forest by the road”, “Oh, dark and invisible night”, “Mother is small for one daughter”, “Oh, because of the stone mountain”. They are characterized by dynamic development of the plot, active dramatization of events and images. An example of such a high dramatic upsurge is the folk song "Spinner", in which Leontovich reached the level of a tragic ballad.

In the requiem songs “They Carry the Cossack”, “The Snowball Flies from Behind the Mountain”, “Death”, Leontovich talentedly rethought the melody of folk lamentation, using the specific sound of individual voices and entire choral groups, using various choral sound effects, for example, singing with a closed mouth .

The songs "Shchedryk" and "Dudaryk" are considered the highest achievement of the composer, in which Leontovich achieved the maximum rhythmic organization. Especially popular was and remains "Shchedryk", which organically combines the techniques of folk polyphony with the achievements of classical polyphony, and each voice plays a completely independent expressive role, reproducing the subtlest mood changes in the song, giving each artistic image to the utmost completion.

Memory

• On February 1, 1921, a significant group of cultural figures, professors and students gathered at the Kiev Music and Drama Institute named after Mykola Lysenko to, according to Christian custom, celebrate 9 days after the death of Nikolai Leontovich. Quickly, but with great responsibility, they organized a concert from the works of Leontovich, spoke with words of regret and grief. At this meeting, the Nikolai Leontovich Memorial Committee was created, which later took shape as the Nikolai Leontovich Musical Society. This society included such well-known Ukrainian artists as Boris Lyatoshinsky and Pavlo Tychyna, many of the members of the society, such as Les Kurbas and Gnat Khotkevich, later shared the tragic fate of Leontovich, dying at the hands of representatives of the USSR state security agencies. The very name of Leontovich was "recognized as irrelevant for the Soviet era", and in fact remained so until the mid-1950s.
• Today, Ukrainian musical groups bear the name of Leontovich, in particular the Bandura Chapel and educational institutions (in particular, the Vinnitsa College of Arts and Culture and Donetsk Music School No. 1).
• Streets in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities are named after Leontovich.
• The Leontovich Memorial Museum operates in the city of Tulchin, Vinnytsia region; in 1977, the Leontovich Museum was also opened in the village. Markovka near the place of his burial.
• In 1977, 37 choral works by Leontovich were recorded by the choir of students of the Kyiv Conservatory under the direction of P. Muravsky.
• In 2005, a disc with 32 spiritual works by Leontovich was released by the Kyiv chamber choir under the direction of M. Gobdych.

List of works

• “On Rusalkin Easter” (based on the fairy tale by B. Grinchenko, 1919, unfinished; 1975 M. Skorik completed, edited and instrumented for the modern composition of the symphony orchestra);

• "Shchedryk"
  "Icebreaker"
  "Dudarik"
  “I Believe” (from the liturgy of St. I. Chrysostom)
• Playback help

Choirs to the words of Ukrainian poets:

• "Ice Breaker", "Summer Tones" (both on the lines of G. Chuprynka),
• “My song” (lyrics by I. Bililovskiy),
• "Legend" (lyrics by M. Voronoi);

Compositions on liturgical texts:

• Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom,
• Prayer,
• Parts of the Vespers;