Hladkyy Hordiy Pavlovych

Biography

Hordii Hladkyi was born in 1849 into a peasant family. They lived on a small farm in the Kostiantynohrad district[2]. The family was poor, so the boy started working early on. He worked as a seller in a tea shop on the corner of Kotliarevskoho and Nebesna Sotnia streets, #20/8 in the 60s. The shop belonged to Moscow merchants brothers K. and S. Popov[3].

Hordii Hladkyi graduated from the county school, read a lot, and played the guitar. His musical abilities manifested themselves quite early, he had a good voice. He received his musical education at local synodal regency courses[3]. The latter were organized by the composer and Kapellmeister Petro Shchurovsky. Every Saturday, young people gathered in Hladkyi's room. These were local seminarians who formed a choir conducted by Hordii Hladkyi[4]. This improvised group was the first to perform the composer's works. It included choral arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs and Hladkyi's own compositions to Taras Shevchenko's words, such as "My Dawn, the Evening Star," "Oh, the Romaine Blossoms on the Mountain," "I Trampled the Path," and others. In the 1870s[5] he composed music to Taras Shevchenko's poem "Testament". From 1870 until his death, he worked as a choir conductor and choral singing teacher at the Poltava Theological Seminary. Among his students was V. Kurdynovsky. He died in 1894 in Poltava.

Compositions

← Go Back to Author List