Mykola Oleksandrovych Fomenko (25 December 1894 - 8 October 1961) was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, music critic and teacher from Rostov-on-Don.
He was orphaned early (at the age of eight). Around the same age, the artist's musical abilities were revealed, but due to difficult life circumstances, he began studying piano at the age of 17 with a local teacher.
During the First World War, he served in the Caucasus. After the war, in 1917, he returned to Kharkiv, where O. Fomenko's father had moved to shortly before. Here he received his musical education at the Kharkiv Conservatory: as a pianist in the class of Professor P. Lutsenko and as a musicologist under Professor S. Bohatyrev.
Along with active composing, he devoted a lot of time to performing, conducting and teaching (he worked as a teacher at the Kharkiv Conservatory, twice was the chairman of the state graduation commission). He gave concerts together with the composer-singer K. Bohuslavskyi (they made an all-Ukrainian tour in 1934). In 1932-35, he worked as a music editor at the publishing house "Mystetstvo".
In 1951 he emigrated to the United States, where he worked as a professor at the Ukrainian Music Institute in New York. He gave concerts with his wife, soprano Isabella Orlovska. As a musicologist, he worked extensively on monographs about Ukrainian composers (commissioned by the Ukrainian department of the Voice of America).
Due to a heart disease, he retired from creative activity for two years, but in 1953 he resumed his teaching and composing work.
Creativity
According to M. Fomenko's memoirs, the musician began composing at an early age: "long before music studios, being completely ignorant of the theory of musical forms." He worked in almost all musical genres. He began his active creative work in 1925. The musician's creative style is characterised by a romantic musical language and a tendency to lyrical images. He embodies his creative ideas mainly in works of large forms. Modern experiments are alien to him: "I consider innovation to be something other than an accumulation of illogical dissonant harmonic verticals with an artificial rhythm". In her review of Fomenko's recital, V. Vytvytskyi notes the influence of impressionist aesthetics on the composer's harmonic language.
List of works
two symphonies
a poem and three suites for symphony orchestra
opera-tale "Ivasyk-Telesyk", zingpiel "Marusya Bohuslavka", unfinished opera "Anna"
two children's operas-miniatures - "Kitty Kiki" and "Postman"
a concerto for piano and orchestra
Suite for violin and piano in 4 parts
ballad for cello
works for piano
vocal lyrics to the poems of Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, P. Tychyna, Yaroslav Slavutych, S. Kryzhanivsky, M. Pryhara, arrangements of folk songs
collection of instructional compositions "MY R"
poem for voice and piano "About Ukraine"
trio for female voices "Virgin Mary"
"Ballad about Baida" for voice and piano
musical arrangement to the poem by Ivan Franko "Moses" (for a capella singing ensemble)
