Kyrylo Stetsenko is one of the key composers of the Ukrainian national revival at the start of the 20th century. A pupil and follower of Mykola Lysenko, he merged the sacred tradition with a new national choral school.
Among his works: the Panakhyda for Taras Shevchenko (1913) — a piercing requiem to the national prophet; choral arrangements of folk songs; sacred concertos in the Ukrainian tradition (“Before Pilate's Court,” “The Lament of the Mother of God”); song cycles on verses by Lesya Ukrainka and Oleksandr Oles. Stetsenko worked actively in the Kyivan Orthodox Ukrainian Church, creating liturgies in Ukrainian. He died prematurely at thirty-nine from typhus during the epidemic. His work is the bridge from Lysenko to Leontovych.
