Levandovskyi Prokopii Stepanovych (8 (19) July 1782, Kyiv - probably †17 (29) June 1849) was a Ukrainian painter and musician.
According to his son Florentyn (who lived in Pavlohrad, Dnipro region), Levandovskyi was born on 8 (19) July 1782 in Kyiv in the family of Archpriest Stefan Levandovskyi. He was educated in theology and graduated from the Kyiv Theological Academy. As a child, he learned painting and the intricacies of brush and paint handling from the Kyiv Cave Monks. He was self-taught to play the huslia, violin, and piano. During Napoleon's war with the Ottoman Empire (modern Turkey), in 1806, militia units began to be formed in Kyiv (the Russian Empire was already a member of the anti-Napoleonic coalition). Levandowski joined the detachment, but when it was sent to replenish Michelson's army, which was based in Moldova, Prokopiy left the detachment. He bought a boat and sailed down the Dnipro with his favorite violin and books. After a few days of sailing, he came ashore in the town of Rzhyshchiv. After taking a break, he felt a surge of inspiration and began composing the concerto "God, Help My Wife." Soon he arrived in Katerynoslav. In those years, the city was just being built. There was a demand for people of various professions. Visiting the Holy Trinity Church, Levandowski communicated and helped the clerks in the porch. The leadership of the diocese noticed his outstanding abilities and appointed Archbishop Platon (Lubarsky) as regent of the choir. At the same time, Prokopiy took up painting, painting portraits of influential people in the city. In 1807, he received a permanent job as a collegiate registrar and a position as a clerk of the medical board. But he was not interested in his official career. At the end of 1814, Levandowski resigned and focused exclusively on music and painting.
Prokopiy Levandovskyi's first visit to Novomoskovsk (Dnipro region) took place in 1810. He was attracted by the city, the magnificent Holy Trinity Church, and the famous Samara Monastery. He arranges to have an iconostasis made for the local cemetery church of All Saints. He set up an art studio and began to fulfill orders for the iconostasis for the Church of St. Nicholas in the village of Pankivka (formerly Pisky), located on the left bank of the Dnipro River opposite Katerynoslav. In 1820, he and his family finally settled in Novomoskovsk in their own house. A well-known author of memoirs about Novomoskovsk in the mid-nineteenth century, Hryhorii Prokopovych Nadkhin (1819-1881), referring to periodicals and literary sources of the time, identified Levandovskyi's musical talent and contribution to musical culture with the famous composers Giuseppe Sarti and his students Stepan Anikiyovych Degtyarev and Artemii Lukianovych Vedel. Levandowski was perceived by his contemporaries as a successor to the work of these composers. He inherited and combined their artistic qualities and creative achievements in his work. Prokopiy Stepanovych was the first to introduce partes singing in the south of the empire, in Novomoskovsk, where he created and directed choirs of boys, adults, and mixed, multi-voiced choirs in the Samara Monastery and the Trinity Church. He used the works of his predecessors for choral singing, but mostly composed his own music to church texts.
Works.
He composed more than 80 melodies to poems from the psalter and prayers, as well as secular music. The most famous and widespread are the concertos: "Judge Me, O God", "Incline, O Lord, Thy Ear", "I Weep and Weep", "Praise the Lord with all Tongues", "I Will Bless the Lord for All Time", "To Thee, O Lord, Lift Up My Soul", "From the depths of the earth I call to you, O Lord", "Have mercy on me, O God", "Liturgy", "Cherubic Song", "Song of Thanksgiving to God", "Cantata for the Bright Resurrection of Christ". Others should be found among the church music pieces labeled "author unknown." This is due to the fact that Levandowski treated his creative achievements with Christian modesty and mostly did not indicate his authorship on the score. He created not for the sake of fame, but for the sake of people. In addition to spiritual works for singing, Levandowski arranged them for the piano: "Lord Have Mercy," "Cherubic Song," "King of Heaven," "Our Father," "Come, Let Us Worship," and many others. And on the small organ, he played Bortnyansky's entire dinner service. He also arranged many Ukrainian songs for the piano, composed several marches, ecoses (a lively melody for ballroom dancing), polonaises, waltzes, and mazurkas.
In addition to music, Prokopiy Stepanovych was quite successful in painting. He was a well-known, recognized godman in the entire Prysamaryia and middle Dnipro region, whose work received the blessing of the Holy Synod of the Russian Empire.
From the testimony of Theodosius Makarevsky we know that at the end of the eighteenth century there was active construction of churches in the Novomoskovsk region [2]. It took only a year or two from the consecration of the site to the construction of a wooden building. However, it was impossible to make an iconostasis for a church in advance, due to the lack of a project. They were created based on the specific conditions, wishes, and capabilities of the customer. Indirectly, it is known that between 1810 and 1849 Levandovskyi made iconostases for the churches of St. Nicholas in the village of Mykhailivka on the Orla, the Entrance of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Zalineina settlement, the Assumption of the Mother of God in Novoselivka on the Pidpilna River, and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Ocherevatne settlement.
He was a recognized portraitist, a master of miniature and large portraits. His contemporaries were impressed and attracted by what they saw for the first time, by the artist's ability to reproduce with great accuracy not only the appearance but also the spiritual essence of the person who posed for him.
It is extremely difficult to establish the date of Lewandowski's death, which overtook him at the age of 68. There is some indirect evidence that it occurred on June 17 (29), 1849. Prokopiy Stepanovych's body was buried with honors in the fence of the Novomoskovsk cemetery church of All Saints. It was located on the western side of the now defunct city cemetery, near the corner of modern-day Suchkova and Poleva streets.
