Cossack Mamay playing kobza while riding the horse.

Cossack Mamay being tempted to drink by the Polish-looking Satan. Ukrainian folk art 1st half of the 19th c. Linen, oil. 67х95cm. National Art Museum of Ukraine

Cossack Mamay (Kozak Mamay, Ukrainian: Козак Мамай) is a Ukrainian folkloric hero, one of standard characters in traditional Ukrainian itinerant puppet theater, the Vertep. Mamay eventually became the national personification of Ukraine and Ukrainians.

Review[link]

Cossack Mamay is encountered in legends, folk stories and proverbs. These became widely popular after the dissolution of the Zaporizhian Sich in 1775. Cossack Mamay is one of the most common characters in Ukrainian folk painting, from late 17th century to present time. In the hundreds of surviving paintings, Cossack Mamay is usually shown with a kobza – a lute-like musical instrument that is the symbol of Ukrainian soul; a horse, which represented both freedom and fidelity; and an oak with his weapons hanging on it symbolizing the people's strength. The paintings from the time of Koliyivschyna sometimes portray Mamay on the background of violent incidents involving Poles or Jews.

On the 1997 coin minted by National Bank of Ukraine, Cossack Mamay is dressed in a rich coat with fur and sits with his legs crossed, smoking a pipe and playing a kobza. Traditional depictions of Cossack military life are around Mamay: a horse with the rich harness, tied to a spear planted in earth with a small flag on its top; a green oak-tree with a sabre hanging from it; a pistol and a stone powder case; high Turkish hat and a bottle of "okovyta" (Ukrainian vodka).

The coin's external circumference has inscriptions: (Ukrainian: Козак Мамай, Cossack Mamay) – at the left and (Ukrainian: Лицар волі і честі, Knight of Freedom and Honor) – at the right. On top these inscriptions are separated with a small flag at the spear top, and underneath – with a conventionalized guelder-rose spray.

The Mamay coin is a part of "Heroes of the Cossack Age," Ukraine's commemorative and jubilee coins.

Gallery[link]

See also[link]

• Cossack
• History of the Cossacks
• Zaporizhian Host
• Zaporizhian Sich

References[link]

• Бушак С. М. Сміхова культура українського народу у творах «Козак Мамай» та «Запорожцях» Іллі Рєпіна // Скарбниця української культури. Збірка наукових праць. — Вип. 3. / Чернігівский історичний музей. – Чернігів: Сіверянська думка, 2002. — C. 72–79.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cossack Mamay

• Torban.org, Cossack Mamay image gallery.
• mamay.ch, Kozak Mamay. MAMAY'S ALIVE, HE WAS JUST THINKING.

This Ukrainian history-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Mykola Lysenko (1869).

Statue of Mykola Lysenko in Kiev.

Mykola Lysenko's grave at Baikove Cemetery in Kiev.

Mykola Vitaliyovych Lysenko (Ukrainian: Мико́ла Віта́лійович Ли́сенко, 22 March [O.S. 10 March] 1842 – 6 November [O.S. 24 October] 1912) was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist.

Biography[link]

Lysenko was born in Hrynky, Kremenchuk Povit, Poltava Governorate,^[1] the son of Vitaliy Romanovych Lysenko (Ukrainian: Віталій Романович Лисенко). From childhood he became very interested in the folksongs of Ukrainian peasants and by the poetry of Taras Shevchenko. When Shevchenko's body was brought to Ukraine after his death in 1861, Lysenko was a pallbearer. During his time at Kiev University, Lysenko collected and arranged Ukrainian folksongs, which were published in seven volumes. One of his principal sources was the kobzar Ostap Veresai (after whom Lysenko later named his son).

Lysenko was initially a student of Biology at the Kharkiv University, studying music privately. On a scholarship which he won from the Russian Music Society he pursued further professional music studies at the Leipzig Conservatory. It is there that he understood the importance of collecting, developing and creating Ukrainian music rather than duplicating the work of Western classical composers.

On his return to Kiev he continued to create Ukrainian themed compositions. His Ukrainophilic approach to composition was not supported by the Russian Imperial Music Society which promoted a Great Russian cultural presence in Ukraine. As a result Lysenko severed his relationship with them, never to compose any music set to the Russian language, nor allow any translations of his works into the Russian language.

In order to improve his orchestration and composition skills the young Lysenko traveled to St. Petersburg where he took orchestration lessons from Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov in the mid 1870s, but his fervent Ukrainian national position and disdain for Great Russian autocracy retarded his career. He supported the 1905 revolution and was in jail briefly in 1907. In 1908, he was the head of the Ukrainian Club, an association of Ukrainian national public figures in Kiev.

For his opera libretti Lysenko insisted on using only the Ukrainian language. Tchaikovsky was impressed by Lysenko's Taras Bulba and wanted to stage the work in Moscow, but Lysenko's insistence on it being performed in the Ukrainian language, not Russian, prevented the performance from taking place in Moscow.

In his later years, Lysenko raised funds to open a Ukrainian School of Music. His death was widely mourned throughout Ukraine. Lysenko's daughter Mariana followed her father's footsteps as a pianist, and his son Ostap also taught music in Kiev.

Music[link]

Piano music[link]

Lysenko's piano music is little known outside Ukraine. His piano works were considered by Soviet musicologists to be derivative of Chopin. As a result they have not sparked as much interest to musicologists as his vocal music.

Vocal music[link]

Lysenko's early vocal music consisted of settings of Ukrainian folk songs and compositions primarily to the poetry of Taras Shevchenko. Later he began to include other Ukrainian poets in his portfolio and also translations of works by German poets, some of which he did himself.

Interest in Lysenko's art songs to the words of prominent Ukrainian poets such as Taras Shevchenko, Lesia Ukrainka, and Oleksander Oles is increasing, partly due to the recent efforts of the British opera singer Pavlo Hunka.

Operas[link]

Lysenko wrote a number of operatic works, including Natalka Poltavka, Utoplena (The Drowned Woman, after Gogol's May Night) and Taras Bulba.

Musicological studies[link]

Lysenko made the first ethno-organological studies of the music of the blind kobzar Ostap Veresai which he published in 1873-4; they are still exemplary. In this work Lysenko demonstrated the way in which Ukrainian melodic material differs from Russian analogues by its unique use and approach to chromaticism (something that was censored out in Soviet republications).

Lysenko continued to research and transcribe the repertoire of other kobzars from other regions such as Opanas Slastion from Poltava and Pavlo Bratytsia from Chernihiv. He also made a thorough study of other Ukrainian folk instruments such as the torban. His collection of essays about Ukrainian folk instruments, makes him the founder of Ukrainian organology and the first organologist in the Russian Empire.

Students[link]

See also[link]

• Lysenko music school
• List of Ukrainian composers

References[link]

• The World of Mykola Lysenko: Ethnic Identity, Music, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Ukraine. Taras Filenko, Tamara Bulat. Ukraine Millennium Foundation (Canada). 2001. Hardcover. 434 pages. ISBN 966-530-045-8.

1. ^ Encyclopedia of Ukraine (English)

External links[link]

• International Mykola Lysenko Foundation
• Ukraine Millennium Foundation
• Review by Natalie Kononenko
• Lysenko String Quartet in d minor Sound-bites and short bio
• Ukrainian Art Song Project
• Free scores by Mykola Lysenko at the International Music Score Library Project