Oleksandr Korniievskyi (21 March 1889, Danylivka - 31 January 1988, Koryukivka) was a Ukrainian bandura player, author of the chromatic concert bandura.
He was born on 21 March 1889 in the village of Danylivka (now Mena district, Chernihiv region) into a peasant family. At first he studied at the Danylivka Primary School, then at the Ministerial School in Mena. After graduating from the local craft school in 1907, he became a carpenter and cabinetmaker.
When in 1904, after a concert in Kyiv organised by the Ukrainian Music Society "Boyan", where bandura player T. Parkhomenko played a bandura improved by Korniievskyi, the audience began to ask where they could order a bandura, he advised everyone to apply to the Mena Craft School and mentioned the name of the young master O. Korniievskyi.
His customers were often wealthy people, so he had to take into account the wishes that the instrument should not only have a great sound, but also look artistic. Following the advice of M. Lysenko, V. Samoilenko and other bandura fans, O. Korniievskyi added strings for sharps and flats, gave the bandura a chromatic sound, and increased the range of octaves from two to four or five. It was this new and improved bandura that became an instrument that could be used to perform any piece of music. In 1913, at the All-Russian Exhibition of Banduras, the master was awarded a bronze medal.
In the summer of 1915, O. Korniievskyi was drafted into the army. His wife immediately brought him a bandura to Hlukhiv, where he served. The master did not forget about his instrument even at the front. He began to give paid concerts, the proceeds from which went to the fund for the wounded.
When the Civil War broke out, O. Korniievskyi returned to Mena and later moved to Koryukivka. In 1927, his instruments were exhibited at the district exhibition in Konotop.
O. Korniievskyi was not spared the fate of his fate. Exorbitant taxes and the threat of arrest forced him to leave for Lokhvytsia in 1929.
He was arrested on 16.08.1937, and by the decision of the "troika" at the Chernihiv Oblast Department of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of 19.11.1937, he was imprisoned in a penal colony for 10 years for participating in the activities of a Ukrainian anti-Soviet nationalist organisation and conducting agitation. He served his sentence in the Amur PAT from 31.01.1938 and in Svobodlaz; he worked as a musician.
О. Korniievskyi also made a bandura in the concentration camp.
After his release (28.08.1947), after Stalin's death, he lived in Siberia for some time, until in 1961 he bought a house in Koryukivka, and the following year he moved back to his native place. He was rehabilitated on 10.01.1959.
He worked for the next two decades. He made his last 180th double-necked bandura, "Yubileyna", in 1980, at the age of ninety. The last years of the master's life were particularly difficult: rheumatism stiffened his fingers, preventing him from playing his favourite instrument.
O. Korniievskyi died on 31 January 1988 at the age of 99.
Among Korniievsky's students was Isaac Levit, a bandura player from Slobozhanshchyna.
Author of the chromatic concert bandura
Oleksandr Korniievskyi created a new musical instrument - the chromatic concert bandura. He took the kobza of Tertiaryi Parkhomenko as a basis and added half-tone strings between the strings. He significantly increased the number of strings, invented and installed damper switches on the strings.
Family connections
From 1861 to 1873, Samiilo's father served in the North Caucasus. L. Tolstoy served as a lieutenant in the same regiment, and they knew each other well. In 1896 and 1898, Leo Tolstoy, incognito, as a "travelling peasant," collected material for his works about the life of small-land peasants and the causes of peasant unrest in the Chernihiv region. The writer twice visited S. Korniievskyi, who was then a volost clerk in Mena.
daughter Vira - died in the siege of Leningrad
his wife, E. Korniievska, was burned to death in 1943 in Koryukivka in her own house.
Commemorating the family
Nowadays, a memorial room of O. Korniievskyi is opened here, and a street is named after him. The master's musical instruments are known far beyond Ukraine. The author signed and dated them, so they are easy to find among museum collections. The largest number of them are in the Bandura Museum in Yalta (thanks to the artistic director of the Bandura Chapel, Oleksii Nyrko), the Chernihiv Historical Museum named after V. Tarnovskyi, the Korniievskyi Memorial Room in Koryukivka, the Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine (Kyiv), and the Koryukivka School of Art named after O. Korniievskyi. This latter collection includes seven banduras by the master. The oldest of them dates back to 1912.
Oleksandr Korniievskyi went down in the history of Ukrainian culture as a master of musical instruments (primarily banduras) and as a decorative artist (he decorated his products with carvings, intarsia, inlay, and drawings).
