Lyzohub, Oleksander

Lyzohub, Oleksander [Лизогуб, Олександер], b 26 February 1790 in Sedniv, Chernihiv gubernia, d 5 February 1839. Military officer, composer and pianist; descendant of the Lyzohub Cossack starshyna family of the Chernihiv region; brother of Illia Lyzohub and Andrii Lyzohub. An officer of the Russian army during the Napoleonic Wars, he eventually rose to the rank of general major. Among his other military operations, he commanded an ulhans regiment in the campaign to suppress the Polish Insurrection of 1830–1. Lyzohub was one of the first Ukrainian composers for piano. His works include nocturnes (two of his nocturnes dated 1821 were the first musical works of in this genre composed in the Russian Empire), mazurkas, art songs (‘Death in a Foreign Land’), and sets of variations on Ukrainian folk songs (‘Oh, There Is a Well in the Field,' ‘And I Had a Wife,’ and ‘Don't Go to the Party, Hryts’). Contemporary sources also refer to some works by Lyzohub that have not survived, including two lyrical nocturnes.

Marko Robert Stech

[This article was updated in 2023.]