Omelian Mykhailovych Vitoshynskyi (Emilian Vitoshynskyi, September 21, 1869, Lublin Province - after 1929, St. Petersburg) was a spiritual composer, conductor, public and church figure, collector of folk songs and legends of the Kholm region and Podlasie, supporter and popularizer of religious chants. Member of the Mykola Leontovych Music Society.
Born on September 21, 1869 in the family of a priest.
1885-1891 - studied at the Kholmske Theological School, Kholmske Theological Seminary.
1891-1895 - studied at the Moscow Theological Academy. He also studied at Kharkiv University.
1898-1916 - taught Russian at the 3rd Warsaw Men's Gymnasium (1906-1909 taught at the Men's Gymnasium in Lodz).
He studied music theory and composition at the Warsaw Conservatory.
In 1898, he became one of the founders of the Russian Choral Society in Warsaw and participated in the organization's activities until 1914.
1906-1912 he organized spiritual concerts in Chłomo dedicated to the local church singing tradition.
In 1912 and 1913, he organized two folk singing congresses in the Kholm region, where he led a combined peasant choir.
Since 1908, he participated in 5 regency congresses in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and was the chairman of the 5th (1914). He was one of the founders of the Society for the Dissemination of Church and Secular Choral Singing (the charter was approved in 1916).
He was a pioneer in the study of the musical material of Ukrainian spiritual music and poetic texts.
He recorded Ukrainian ritual songs. In particular, in 1914, in the village of Mikulino in the Kholm region, he recorded a number of wedding songs ("Panychy came from Lviv," "Oh, to the yard, the path to the yard," "And look, Maryseika, at the hewn table," "Oh, Maryseika was combing the yellow flax," "Children should know that friendship is good." "Outside the city, there is a fast river with new masonry", "A small bird, a small bird sat on the ruton", "Why don't you have breakfast, young Maryna, at your father's", "There is a green periwinkle under the cherry tree", "Pyatnonka, zachaino"). [1]
In 1916, he evacuated from the war zone to Moscow, where in 1917 he was elected a member of the Local Council of the Orthodox Russian Church from the laity of the Kholm diocese.
1917 - In Moscow, he was elected chairman of the Society of Ukrainians in Kholm. He was also elected a member of the board of the Kholm "Enlightenment."[2]
From the early 1920s he lived in Kyiv. He was a member of the Mykola Leontovych Musical Society, taught at a labor school until 1924, and was unemployed and in poverty from 1924.
In 1925-1929, he was a member of the section of choral sacred composers of the Society of Writers and Composers "Drumsoyuz", created in Leningrad, whose members, having lost their permanent jobs, could receive royalties for their musical works.
He died no earlier than 1929. He was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.
Works
Vitoshynsky Omelyan. Peasant stories about the Kholm "reunification" (1866-1875) // For a hundred years / Edited by M.S. Hrushevsky. - Book 1. - 1927. - P. 77-82.
Vitoshynskyi, Emelian. Folk-church song of Kholmskaya Rus' // Theological Herald. Moscow: Printing House of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1910, July-August, pp. 482-492.
Vitoshinsky, Omelyan. Folk-church chant of Kholmskaya Rus' // Theological Herald. Moscow: Printing House of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1910, July-August, pp. 482-492.
