Viktor Stepanovych Kosenko (; – 3 October 1938) was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, and educator. He was regarded by his contemporaries as a master of lyricism.
Kosenko's life is conclusively divided into three distinct phases, in Warsaw, where he studied with renowned teacher Aleksander Michałowski, in Zhytomyr, where he began teaching piano and music theory at the Music Technicum, later becoming director of the Zhytomyr Music School, and finally in Kyiv, where he devoted more time to symphonic compositions such as his Heroic Overture, which brought him due recognition in the world of Soviet music.
Kosenko's music combines a post-romantic idiom with intonations of Slavic folk songs and Western-European influences. His vocal, chamber and symphonic works are among the most important pieces of that time in USSR.
Life and career
Early life and education Viktor Stepanovych Kosenko was born on 23 November 1896 in Saint Petersburg, into the large family of a major general, Stepan Kosenko. Viktor's family moved from Saint Petersburg to Warsaw in 1898, where later he would encounter the best of world musical classics while listening to the performance of musicians such as Fritz Kreisler, Ferruccio Busoni, and Pablo Casals. His mother Leopolda played the piano, sang, and composed, and the boy grew hearing Ukrainian and Russian folk songs, and musical compositions by Frédéric Chopin, and Johannes Brahms.
When Kosenko was about five or six, he began to pick out familiar melodies on the piano, as he had absolute pitch and a good musical memory. He attempted to improvise, showing signs of his musical potential. At nine, he could play Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata from memory, as he heard his older sister Maria practicing it. She gave her brother his first piano lessons. His formal music education began in 1905, with private piano lessons from a professor Yudytskiy, with whom he studied for two years. From 1908, he studied under Aleksander Michałowski, a professor at the Warsaw Conservatory.
In the summer of 1914, Kosenko was preparing to enter the Warsaw Conservatory to study piano. However, the outbreak of World War I forced his family to move to Saint Petersburg. In 1915, he was admitted to the upper-division piano class at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he amazed the committee members by his ability to read a score, put it aside, and then play from memory. He also demonstrated a natural aptitude for musical transposition.
Kosenko continued studying composition and music theory under the composer Mikhail Sokolovsky,Sokolovsky was himself a pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. piano with Iryna Miklashovskaya, and playing as concertmaster at the Mariinsky Theatre.Russian composer Alexander Glazunov, director of the conservatory at the time Kosenko was a student, freed him from paying tuition fees after finding out that he was working as accompanist at the Mariinsky Theater for financial reasons. During this time, he received positive evaluations from Alexander Glazunov, director of the institution, who wrote that Kosenko had "great pianistic and compositional abilities, and perfect pitch".Original Russian translated text: "Прекрасные пианистические и композиторские способности, абсолютный слух." Miklashovskaya described him as a "talented musician, very modest and well-behaved."Original Russian translated text: "талантливый музыкант, очень скромний и хорошо воспитанный." During his studies, Kosenko wrote symphonic poems, and preludes and mazurkas for the piano. His music during this period is characterized with stylistic musical characteristics of Romantic and post-romantic directions, which features a combination of the European tradition with a national Ukrainian element.
Zhytomyr
After graduating from the conservatory in 1918 Kosenko joined his family in Zhytomyr, at that time the cultural center of the Volyn province. The following year he began teaching piano classes and music theory at the Music Technicum,The Music Technicum is a musical institution that would be named after him from 1938. later becoming director of the Zhytomyr Music School. In February 1920, Kosenko married Angelina Kanepp.Angelina was older than Kosenko and already had two children, named Raisa and Iryna, from her first marriage. His love and deep admiration for her was such that he used to write to her almost every day and was disappointed if for any reason she could not reply to him as fast as he wished. The pieces created between 1919 and 1924 convey deep lyrical feelings, hence the reason he dedicated almost all of his output to her.
In September 1922, Kosenko gave his first concert, attended by his family and close friends, traveling to Moscow the following year to meet with composers and musicians. By this time he was allowed by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians to have his first piano compositions published.
This period that Kosenko spend in Zhytomyr was one of the richest in his musical career for he perfected his own artistic style in instrumental, vocal and chamber music; genres in which he was very active at that time. There, he authored a large number of piano pieces, over twenty romances, violin and cello sonatas, works for children, and music for plays. He was also heavily involved in a myriad of musical activities such as the creation of a music society, concert appearances, the organization of his piano chamber trio, vocal quartets and even a symphony orchestra, besides serving as accompanist player for different ensembles in the musical life of the city.
Compositional debut In 1921, Kosenko and his fellow musicians founded the Leontovych Musical Society.According to the memoirs of opera singer Zoia Gaidai, this group of artists, which primarily consisted of peasants, workers and soldiers, helped popularize Russian piano music. In September 1922, he gave his debut in Zhytomyr, performing his own compositions. Two years later, he was invited to Moscow for a recital at the Association for Contemporary Music, where he met with composers and musicians. During this period, Kosenko's piano works were published for the first time. He then performed as a virtuoso pianist in recitals and formed a piano trio along with violinist Volodymyr Skorokhod and cellist Vasyly Kolomyitsev, giving over one hundred free concerts throughout Ukrainian SSR between 1923 and 1929.
In 1927, Kosenko was invited by the Association of the Proletarian Musicians of Ukrainian SSR to give a concert in Kharkiv, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR at the time. This same association invited him again in 1928 and 1929. Kosenko began giving concerts in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, and nearby cities. The programme of the concerts included compositions by Ukrainian composers Borys Lyatoshynsky, Levko Revutsky, and Pylyp Kozytskiy.
Kyiv Creative conflicts with the new Stalin regime prompted his move to Kyiv, where he was offered a position at the Mykola Lysenko Institute of Music and Drama as a chamber musician and musical analyst in 1929, followed by a promotion to music professor in 1932. Kosenko originally taught piano and chamber ensemble classes, and a year later, he also began teaching a specialized course on analysis of form in both the historical-theoretical and compositional departments.Some of Kosenko's students included Nikolai Chaikin, Alexander Mihailovich Sandler and Hryhory Kytasty. The school was later reorganized, the music classes being transferred to the Kyiv Conservatory, where he taught from 1934 to 1937, while the rest of the school became the National University of Theatre, Film and TV. However, during this time, he did not abandon his performing and composing activity, which he loved so much.
He was often invited to be in the juries of musical performance competitions as a well-known performer and respected pedagogue. This included a trip to Moscow in 1931, Kharkiv in 1933, and Leningrad in 1934. This period became a time of mature work for Kosenko, who had established himself in the world of Soviet music. His output began to include new genres, particularly his Heroic Overture for symphony orchestra. Kosenko also arranged Ukrainian folk songs and in 1936, the first compilation of Soviet folk songs was arranged with his participation.
Kosenko spent most of his life in Zhytomyr, living in poverty, to which he seemed largely indifferent. After being persuaded by the Soviet government of the time to share his living quarters with members of other families, and frequently bringing in people from the streets to whom he gave food and money, he was given a small three-room apartment on the second floor of an old building at Mikhaila street in Kyiv, to where they all moved thanks to his wife's insistent requests to the Soviet Ukrainian Government in order to recognize Kosenko's efforts in popularizing genuine Ukrainian national music. Finally in 1938, the sick Kosenko was personally awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour by the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Nikita Khrushchev.
Despite the medical treatment that he was receiving at the time, Kosenko lived for only 42 years, dying on 3 October 1938 of kidney cancer, a condition apparently linked to the unsanitary conditions in which he and his family had lived for so long. His wife Angelina continued to promote his music long after his death. Kosenko left for posterity his unfinished opera Marina, and dozens of works such as his Twenty-four Pieces for Children, Op. 25, composed in 1936, a treasury of teaching which made Kosenko one of the first successful Soviet Ukrainian composers in children's music.
Music Kosenko's vocal compositions include a large number of ballads, choral and folk arrangements as well. He composed over 100 compositions for piano among waltzes, preludes, nocturnes, sonatas and mazurkas, in a total of about 250 musical works such as his symphonic Moldavian poem, violin and piano concertos, trios and string quartets during his short musical career.
Style During his time as professor of the Kyiv Conservatory and the composition of his symphonic Moldavian poem, which he never heard performed, Kosenko was already deeply interested in learning and gathering information on Moldavian folk-music. Being a cross between the late-Romantic period and the national musical style of his country, his music shows no direct indication that any specific folk song was used in his compositions. Kosenko used then melodies, harmonies, dorian, lydian and phrygian modes, so linking his work with Ukrainian folk tunes. Some of these elements involved doubling melodies in thirds, sixths and tenths, using "open" fifths, and pedal points.
Children's music Kosenko dedicated much of his attention to children. During the 1930s, part of his output was focused on the most demanding and impartial audience. His first compositions for children, entitled Four Pieces for Children for piano (1930), were written specifically for the Ukrainian Soviet piano repertoire, demonstrating his understanding of child psychology and deep knowledge of the main objectives of a teacher. Next was his Collection of Children's Pieces for piano (1930). His Twenty-four Pieces for Children for piano (1936) followed, becoming one of the most popular collections for children.
Reception