Yakiv Stepanovych Stepovyi (real name Yakymenko/Akymenko, 8 (20) October 1883 Kharkiv - 4 November 1921, Kyiv) was a Ukrainian composer, teacher and music critic. Younger brother of the composer Fedir Yakymenko.
He was born in 1883 in Kharkiv. Yakiv's father worked in a church choir, and his older brother, Fedir Yakymenko, studied singing at the St. Petersburg Court Chapel and later became a famous Ukrainian composer.
Yakiv was also admitted to the St Petersburg Court Chapel, and during his stay in the chapel (1895-1902) he mastered the profession of conductor, learned to play the piano and clarinet.
In 1909, he graduated from the St Petersburg Conservatory in the class of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Anatoly Lyadov.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Stepovyi was mobilised into the Russian army and appointed a clerk on a sanitary train.
In May 1917, the composer managed to get out of the unpleasant service in the tsarist army, and in the same year he became a teacher at the Kyiv Conservatory and the director of the Musical Drama and the State Vocal Ensemble.
After another concert tour, Stepovyi suddenly fell ill with typhus and died in Kyiv in 1921. He was buried at the Baikove cemetery.
Activity
Yakiv Stepovyi was a representative of the Ukrainian musical intelligentsia of the first quarter of the twentieth century, one of the founders of the national school of composition and a successor of Mykola Lysenko's traditions. He was a master of solo chants, choral and piano works, author of music collections for children, as well as a teacher at the Kyiv Conservatory, founder of the State Vocal Quartet, head of the national music section of the All-Ukrainian Committee of Arts, music educator, and promoter of world classics in Ukraine.
Olena Akhmatova, a former artist of the Ukrainian Vocal Ensemble (first a quartet and later an octet) under the direction of Yakiv Stepovyi, has preserved memories of the composer.
The Ukrainian Vocal Ensemble
The composition of the octet: V. Guzhova, O. Sukhanova (sopranos), T. Temirova-Burazer, O. Akhmatova (mezzo-sopranos), V. Sokolynskyi, H. Vnukovskyi (tenors), B. Veprynskyi, S. Papa-Athanasopoulos (basses).
Solos on the words of T. Shevchenko, I. Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, P. Tychyna, M. Rylsky, etc;
separate cycles:
"Periwinkles" to the words of various poets
"Songs of Mood" to the words of O. Oles;
for piano:
Sonata,
prelude "In Memory of Taras Shevchenko"
rondo,
fantasy,
a cycle of miniatures,
three fugues;
two suites for orchestra based on Ukrainian folk songs,
50 arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs for choir,
a vocal cycle for children called "Snowdrops",
a collection of songs for children based on Shevchenko's lyrics "Kobzar",
the opera "The Slave" based on Shevchenko.
Recordings of works by Yakiv Stepovyi
Album of Pavlo Hunka's project "Ukrainian Art Songs"
"Yakiv Stepovyi" (2 CDs, 55 pieces, 2010).
Tribute.
In 1921, Stepovyi's name was given to the State Vocal Ensemble he founded. In 1969, a street in Kyiv was named in his honour. The Kyiv Children's Music School No. 1 at 39 Sahaidachnoho Street is named after Stepovyi.
