Apollon Seliverstovych Hussakóvsky (1841, Okhtyrka - February 25 (March 9), 1875, St. Petersburg)[1] was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, and chemist by training.
He was born in 1841 in Okhtyrka (now Sumy region, Ukraine). It is not known when he moved to St. Petersburg, but in 1856-1857 he studied at the Second St. Petersburg Gymnasium.
Hussakovsky's family: father, retired major, participant of the War of 1812, Seliverst; mother N. N. and sons Apollo and Leonid. The grandmother lived in the village of Stara Ivanivka, Okhtyrka district. From childhood, Apollo showed a talent for composing, his parents took care of his education and from 1857 he studied music with Milius Balakirev.[1] Balakirev introduced him to the "Mighty Bunch" and introduced him to Cesar Cui, Vladimir and Dmitry Stasov, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Modest Mussorgsky.
They hit it off especially well with Mussorgsky, who dedicated Hussakovsky's B-major scherzo and an arrangement from Beethoven's Op. 59, No. 3. At the meetings of the group, he performed as a pianist and composer, although he had no professional musical education. He was a member of the "Mighty Handful" in 1858-1861.
He studied at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of St. Petersburg University until 1863, received his PhD and entered the Department of Allotments. In 1863-1867 he lived abroad, where he studied chemistry and agriculture. In 1868, he was enrolled as a librarian at the St. Petersburg Botanical Garden, and in 1869 he began his teaching career at the St. Petersburg Agricultural Institute.
In October 1862, he married Olga Tilicheeva. In the early 1870s, he became the father of four daughters.
In 1961, he stopped playing music altogether.
He died on February 25 (March 9), 1875 in St. Petersburg from an exacerbation of tuberculosis.
Apollo Seliverstovych Hussakovsky
Basic information
Date of birth 1841
Place of birth Okhtyrka
Date of death March 9, 1875
Place of death St. Petersburg
Citizenship Flag of Russia.svg Russian Empire
Profession composer
Education St. Petersburg University
Creative work
His compositional abilities were revealed in his youth. In 1850, he wrote his Scherzo, Op. 8, in C minor (for piano), in 1852 - Scherzo in A minor, in 1854 - Polka in D major, dedicated to his mother (the only work published during the author's lifetime). Most of the works were composed in 1857-1861. More than 50 works have survived, mostly for piano.
Among them: the symphonic Allegro "Let There Be Light" (performed in 1861, under the baton of Carl Schubert, a Russian cellist and conductor), "Symphonic Sonata for Orchestra", symphonies (unfinished), "Foolish, or Comic Scratch" for string quartet, excerpts from music to the tragedy "Faust" by J. Goethe's Faust, a vocal-instrumental piece "Boyarin Orsha" (based on a poem by Mikhail Lermontov), several piano scherzos, two movements of a piano sonata, romances, and other works.
A collection of music manuscripts and letters to M. Balakirev is kept by the Russian National Library (formerly the State Order of the Red Banner of Labor Public Library named after M. Saltykov-Shchedrin) in St. Petersburg.
A small collection of Hussakovsky's piano works was published a hundred years after his death thanks to the efforts of Ukrainian composer M. B. Stepanenko.
