Mykola Lysenko is the figure with whom Ukrainian academic music begins as a national phenomenon. Educated at the Leipzig Conservatory, he consciously chose to serve Ukrainian culture at a time when the language itself was banned by the Valuev Circular and the Ems Ukaz.
His works: the opera Taras Bulba (epic, heroic), Natalka Poltavka (after Kotliarevsky, a folk comedy), The Drowned Maiden, the cycle The Seasons, over a hundred folk-song arrangements, piano pieces on Ukrainian themes, and choral cantatas. Lysenko founded the Music and Drama School in Kyiv (1904) — the precursor of today's National Music Academy of Ukraine. His refusal to have Taras Bulba staged in St Petersburg in Russian (as Tchaikovsky proposed) was an act of civic courage.
