Porfirii Danylovych Demutskyi (February 25 (March 8), 1860, Yanyshivka, Tarashchansky district, Kyiv province, Russian Empire - June 5, 1927, Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, USSR) was a Ukrainian folklorist, choral conductor, teacher, and composer. Father of Danylo Demutsky.
He was born on February 25 (March 8), 1860 in the village of Yanyshivka (now Ivanivka, Stavyshchenskyi district, Kyiv region) into a noble family. He received his musical education at the Kyiv Theological Seminary in 1876-1882. As a young man, he sang with Mykola Lysenko, with whom he had close creative ties. After graduating from the medical faculty of Kyiv University in 1889, he worked as a doctor in the village of Okhmatove in the Kyiv region. He collected and processed folk songs; he organized a folk choir with which he performed in many parts of Ukraine. The choir's repertoire included Ukrainian folk songs with many voices, performed in a folk style.
1918 - moved to Kyiv; from 1921 he worked in the Ethnographic Commission of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, was a professor at the Mykola Lysenko Music and Drama Institute. He maintained creative ties with professional (the Dumka chapel) and amateur choirs, and actively promoted Ukrainian folk songs.
He died on June 5, 1927. He was buried in Kyiv at the Baikove Cemetery (plot No. 2; the tombstone is made of marble, sculptor I. Mayer).
Creativity.
Author of vocal works ("Thought about Fedir Bezridnyi", "Testament" and others based on texts by Taras Shevchenko). The most important collections:
"Ukrainian Folk Songs in the Kyiv Region" (1905)
"Ukrainian Folk Songs (1951)
"The Lyre and its Motif" (1954)
"Ukrainian Folk Songs. Polyphony" (1954)
"Ukrainian Folk Songs of the Okhmativka Choir [Archived April 30, 2021, at the Wayback Machine]", Musical Ukraine, Kyiv - 1968
Honoring the memory
A museum named after P. Demutskyi was created at the Uman Music School. A memorial plaque to Porfirii Demutskyi was installed on the facade of the Uman Music School, which also bears his name. A memorial plaque was also installed in the town of Zhashkiv and the village of Okhmativ. In 2004, the Porfirii Demutskyi Regional Prize was established.
