Mykola Vilinsky

Mykola Mykolayovych Vilinsky (Ukrainian: Микола Миколайович Вілінський; 14 May 1888 – 9 September 1956) was a Soviet and Ukrainian composer who held senior chairs at the Odesa Conservatory and later the Kyiv Conservatory. He wrote articles on Ukrainian and Moldovan music, and was a music critic and an expert on the works of the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko. Following the wishes of his father, Vilinsky was initially educated for a career as a lawyer, but then changed to study music at the Odesa Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1919. He taught and composed there for twenty years. During the Second World War he and his family was evacuated from Odesa to Tashkent, where he continued to teach and compose. After the end of the war, he returned to Ukraine and became a professor at the Kyiv Conservatory, where he remained until his death in 1956. His students included Kostiantyn Dankevych, Oleksandr Bilash, Oscar Feltsman, David Gershfeld, and Anton Mucha. Mykola Vilinsky was one of the founders of modern Ukrainian music and the creator of the Ukrainian piano ballad genre. Vilinsky's output includes symphonic suites, music for piano, and arrangements for choir and solo voices of Ukrainian, Russian, Moldavian folk songs. His daughter, Iryna Vilinska was also a professor of music and a composer. Life Early years and education Mykola Mykolayovych Mykola was born on 2/14 May 1888, in Holta, in the Russian Empire, now part of the Ukrainian city of Pervomaisk. He had an older sister, Tamara. Vilinsky's wife Olena Petrovna was a descendant of the Baroque era composer Josse Boutmy, who belonged to a family of musicianship from Ghent known as the Boutmy Dynasty. His father Mykola Oleksandrovych Vilinsky was the mayor of Ananiv. The family on his father's side was descended from a Polish nobleman, Tomasz Wiliński. The Ukrainian writer Marko Vovchok, born Mariia Vilinskа may also have been related to the family.