Myroslav Skoryk

Myroslav Mykhailovych Skoryk (13 July 1938, Lviv – 1 June 2020, Kyiv) was a Ukrainian composer and musicologist. He was awarded the title Hero of Ukraine (2008), became People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1988), and received the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of the Ukrainian SSR (1987). Skoryk also served as artistic director of the National Opera of Ukraine, was a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of Ukraine, and held senior academic posts including professor and head of the composition department at the Lviv National Music Academy named after Mykola Lysenko.

He was born in Lviv into an intellectual family; the renowned Ukrainian opera singer Solomiya Krushelnytska was the sister of Skoryk’s grandmother. In 1945 he began studying music at a Lviv music school, but in 1947 his family was repressed and deported to Siberia. After Joseph Stalin’s death the family returned to Lviv, where Skoryk studied from 1955 to 1960 at the Lviv State Conservatory (now the Lviv National Music Academy), working with Stanislav Liudkevych (music history and theory) and with Roman Symovych and Adam Soltys (composition). In 1960 he continued his studies as a postgraduate student at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Dmitry Kabalevsky, graduating in 1964.

From 1966 until the late 1980s Skoryk taught composition at the Kyiv Conservatory. He later worked for a long time in the United States and then in Australia, returning to Ukraine in the late 1990s. From 1999 he headed the department of the history of Ukrainian music at the National Music Academy of Ukraine named after P. I. Tchaikovsky. From 2002 he was artistic director of the KyivMusicFest festival; in 2005 he chaired the jury of the Chervona Ruta festival; and from 2006, together with Yevhen Stankovych, he served as a co-head of the National Union of Composers of Ukraine, also acting as an official of the union and leading its Lviv branch.

Skoryk’s works were regularly performed in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries, as well as in Germany, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia. He often appeared as a conductor and pianist, performing his own music. Stylistically he continued the traditions of the Lviv composers’ school and made broad use of Ukrainian folklore (especially Carpathian), Lviv urban and salon music-making, and elements of contemporary popular music, above all jazz.

Among his major compositions are the ballet “The Return of Butterfly” (Skoryk–Puccini), the poem “Stronger Than Death,” “Hutsul Triptych,” the “Carpathian” Concerto for Orchestra, a “Suite” and a “Partita” for string orchestra, a Violin Concerto, the cantata “Spring” for choir and symphony orchestra (to words by Ivan Franko), the cantata “Man” for violin and piano (to words by Eduardas Mieželaitis), a piano sonata cycle “In the Carpathians,” and the “Carpathian Rhapsody” for violin and piano (2004). He also composed music for film and animation, including “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” (1964) and the film “High Pass” (1981), associated with the well-known “Melody in A minor,” as well as numerous animated films and later works including “Fox Mykyta” (2007).

As a scholar, Skoryk published musicological and theoretical writings, including studies on Sergei Prokofiev and twentieth-century harmony and chordal structures. He died on 1 June 2020 in Kyiv; a farewell ceremony took place on 3 June in the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the capital. He was buried at Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv.

Connections

This figure has 1 connection in the art history graph.