Ukrainian Galician educator, composer, conductor, literary critic, songwriter, scholar, publisher.
Biography.
In 1903, the family moved to Zolochiv, and a year later his father died. In order to finish high school, Osyp was contracted to do all kinds of work.
In 1911, he entered Lviv University to study natural history. At the same time, he studied at the Mykola Lysenko Higher Music Institute (now the Lviv National Music Academy), and acquired choral singing practice in the choirs "Lviv Boyan" and "Banduryst".
In 1912, the newspaper Dzennik Ludowy published his article about Mykola Lysenko. He contributed to the Illustrated Ukraine magazine, was a member of the editorial board of the Dilo daily, and together with Mykhailo Haivoronsky founded the Lyra publishing house.
UGA Chetar Osyp Zaleski
At the outbreak of World War I, the Zaleskis moved to Vienna. Osyp studied at the Kaiser's Higher School of Music and the University of Vienna, and became an active member of the Ukrainian youth society Sich. In the fall of 1916, he was drafted into the army and worked as a Russian translator in Bukovyna.
The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire found him in Mohyliv-Podilskyi. He joined the Ukrainian Galician Army and fought until the spring of 1919.
In 1920, he married Gertruda Palm, born in Estonia, and became a teacher at the private gymnasium of the Ukrainian society "Ridna Shkola" in Chortkiv.
In 1921, he came to Stanislaviv to work as a science teacher at the gymnasium. At the same time, he founded a branch of the Lviv Music Institute named after M. Lysenko and became its director. He resumed the activities of the Lyra publishing house and published several of his song collections, among other books:
"Carols for Singing with Children's Voices" (1922)
"Songs for One Voice with Piano (1923)
"Fallen in the Battle" (1923)
In 1938, he taught at the Stanislav Stashytsia State Gymnasium in Stanislaviv, from where on July 15, the school authorities transferred him to Buchach, and his workplace was given to a Polish teacher. He began working at the Buchach State Polish-language Gymnasium on September 1, 1938.
At the outbreak of World War II, he moved with his family to Erfurt, Germany, where he worked for a large garden and seed company.
With the Nazi occupation of Poland, the family moved to Yaroslav, where he worked as a natural history teacher at a Ukrainian gymnasium and led the Yaroslav Boyan choir.
In 1944, he was forced to emigrate, as war circumstances separated him from his family. His wife and daughters Lidiia and Khrystyna ended up in a displaced persons camp in Fissen, where she died in 1946. Only after his wife's death was he able to reunite with his daughters in Bavaria.
In 1950, the family moved to the United States, to Buffalo. Here he created a choir at the UCCA organization, joined the opening of Ukrainian studies courses, a Saturday school, the Ukrainian club Nasha Khata, the Plast section, directed a number of choirs, and became an inspector of the School Board in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse.
In 1955, together with his second wife, Halyna Lahodynska-Zaleska, he founded a branch of the Ukrainian Music Institute in Buffalo.
He died in Buffalo on March 13, 1984.
Works.
He wrote a number of articles, including:
"Vasyl Barvinsky",
"Vasyl Bezkorovainyi, Composer, Teacher",
"Sid Vorobkevych",
"Yaroslav Lopatinsky",
"Stanislav Liudkevych,
"On the History of the Songs of the Ukrainian SS",
"Ivan Franko and Music,
"Hnat Khotkevych and the Revival of the Bandura.
"Our Schooling, from Antiquity to 1939", "Solomea Krushelnytska", "Pianist Sofia Ilevych", "Krukova Hora" in the collection Buchach and Buchachchyna.
Theoretical works were published:
"A Brief Outline of the History of Ukrainian Music" - 1958, published by America in Philadelphia,
"General Fundamentals of Musical Knowledge" - 1958, Hoverla in New York,
a book about M. Lysenko - "The New Way" in Winnipeg,
"Musical Dictation" - exercises and songs for learning musical literacy - Buffalo, 1961.
Small Ukrainian musical encyclopedia / ed. O. Zalesky - Munich: Dnipro Wave, 1971. 125 p.
