Rudnytsky, Antin

Rudnytsky, Antin [Рудницький, Антін; Rudnyc’kyj], b 7 February 1902 in Luka, Sambir county, Galicia, d 30 November 1975 in Tom's River, New Jersey, USA. Composer, conductor, pianist, teacher, and musicologist; member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (from 1962); brother of Ivan Kedryn, Milena Rudnytska, and Mykhailo Rudnytsky; husband of Mariia Sokil; father of Roman Rudnytsky. He studied at the Lysenko Higher Institute of Music in Lviv, the Higher Musical School in Berlin, and Berlin University, with such teachers as E. Petri, A. Schnabel, and F. Schreker. He subsequently conducted at opera theaters in Kharkiv (1927–30), Kyiv (1930–2), Lviv, Warsaw, and Kaunas. He emigrated to the United States in 1939, where he worked as a music teacher in various institutions (including the Philadelphia Music Academy) and as a choir conductor. He was a leading organizer of Ukrainian-American musical activities and wrote the historical survey Ukraïns’ka muzyka: Istorychno-krytychnyi ohliad (Ukrainian Music: A Historical Critical Survey, 1963) as well as a collection of articles published posthumously, Pro muzyku i muzyk (On Music and Musicians, 1980). His musical works were initially modernistic but gradually became more impressionistic and romantic. They include the operas Dovbush (1938) and Anna Yaroslavna (1967), three symphonies, a ballet suite and the ballet Burï nad Zakhodom (Storms over the West, 1932), a lyric poem, an overture, a concerto for cello and orchestra, the oratorio Haidamaky (1974), the cantata Moses (to Ivan Franko's poem), Poslaniie (The Epistle, to Taras Shevchenko's poem), and works for chamber orchestra, piano, and choir, as well as approximately 50 art songs for voice and piano.

Wasyl Wytwycky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]