Mykhailo Andriyovych Kossak (8 April 1874, Horishnia Vyhnyanka village, now Chortkiv district, Ternopil region - 2 January 1938, Kamianets-Podilskyi) was a Ukrainian composer, conductor, musicologist, and music educator.
Childhood and youth
Mykhailo Kossak was born on April 8, 1874, in the suburban village of Horishnia Vyhnyanka near Chortkiv in the family of an amateur choir conductor. Mykhailo was the eldest among the six children of Deacon Andrii Ivanovych Kossak (1850-1917) and Rosaliya Hryhorivna Fedorovych (1856-1923). After him were born: Maria in 1876, Antonina in 1878, Kateryna in 1881, Vasyl in 1886, and Volodymyr in 1888.
All the children learned music from an early age and sang in their parents' choir. Later, Vasyl Kossak became famous as an actor, singer, and director, and Kateryna Kossak (née Rubchakova) as a dramatic actress and singer.
In 1892, after completing four grades of the gymnasium at the monastery of St. Basil in Buchach, Mykhailo entered the Lviv Conservatory to study conducting, harmony, and instrumentation. At the same time, he worked as a chorister in the Lviv operetta company of Yuriy Myshkovsky, and soon became a choirmaster.
The beginning of his career
In 1896, after completing his studies at the conservatory, Kossak joined the People's Theater of the Ruska Besida Society (later Ukrainian Besida).
The theater company toured continuously. In 1902, conductor Mykhailo Kossak visited Kamianets-Podilskyi with the company. The success exceeded all expectations. The people of Kamianets-Podilskyi especially liked the conductor's sister, the artist Kateryna Rubchakova.
In 1909, Kossak became one of the organizers of the recording of Ukrainian folk songs, works by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky and Mykola Lysenko on records.
World War I and the postwar period
When World War I broke out in 1914, 40-year-old M. Kossak was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. There he became a military conductor with the rank of fendrik.
Kossack's unit was among the units surrounded by Russian troops in Przemysl. After the surrender of the besieged in the spring of 1915, Kossack was taken prisoner. A few weeks later he was in Tashkent. In the prisoner of war camp, Kossack organized an orchestra.
In 1918, after the conclusion of the Brest Peace, when prisoners of war were allowed to return home, Kossak went to Lviv. But during a stopover in Kyiv, Mykola Sadovskyi invited Mykhailo Kossak to his theater as a conductor.
In 1919, the Mykola Sadovskyi Theater moved to Kamianets-Podilskyi. However, Kossak remained in Kyiv and began working at the Musical Drama Theater.
In 1921, Mykhailo moved to Kamianets-Podilskyi with his new family. For some time he was a conductor at the local theater. At the same time, he worked as a singing and music teacher at a music school.
In February 1925, Kossak was appointed a teacher of the second group (i.e., an assistant), head of the laboratory of musical and vocal art at the Kamianets-Podilskyi Institute of Public Education (now Kamianets-Podilskyi National University).
Years of repression
The Kossak family lived in Kamianets-Podilskyi in difficult living conditions. For a long time, Mykhailo could not get an apartment, so he lived in an unheated institute wing.
Although Kossak was promoted to associate professor, he was transferred back to an assistant professor six months later. Attempts to restore justice led to Kossak's dismissal from the institute. All of this was the result of the fact that the former rector of the institute, Volodymyr Herynovych, who was arrested in Moscow and was broken by interrogations, "testified" that Mykhailo Kossak was a member of a counterrevolutionary organization that allegedly existed in Kamianets-Podilskyi among the teachers of institutes and technical schools.
However, in 1933 Kossak was not arrested. Everything was limited to a summons to the investigator, where Kossak was required to testify that Herynovych demanded that he "learn as much as possible with the choir of forbidden Ukrainian songs."
On December 1, 1934, Kossak was re-enrolled at the institute. He became the head of the restored choral and symphony groups. But in the summer of 1935, the institute was closed, and the students were transferred to other higher education institutions. After that, Kossak got a job as a pianist-accompanist at a local cinema. His wife got a job as a nurse at the city hospital, and his son Yaroslav went to school.
On December 26, 1937, Mykhailo Kossak was arrested. On December 30, 1937, the "special troika" at the NKVD office in the Kamianets-Podilskyi region sentenced Kossak to death by firing squad. The sentence was carried out on January 2, 1938. Kossak was buried in a mass grave on the territory of the Zahalskyi (Zahaiskyi) farm.
On July 10, 1989, the prosecutor of the Khmelnytskyi region concluded that Kossak was convicted unjustifiably.
Works.
Mykhailo Kossak made the instrumentation for Denys Sichynskyi's opera Roksolana, wrote music for many performances, including the first Ukrainian stage production of Bedřich Smetana's The Sold Bride and Stanislav Moniuszko's Pebbles, "Yaroslav Lopatinsky's Aeneas on a Journey, Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Charles Gounod's Faust, Georges Bizet's Carmen, Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata, and some operas by Mykola Lysenko, Jean Offenbach, and Franz Lehár. He composed music for the plays Viy, Gypsy Aza, Let the Heart Go, It Will Take You to Captivity, and Forest Song.
He was the author of romances, marches, pieces for violin, and arrangements of folk songs.
