Nyzhankivsky, Nestor

Nyzhankivsky, Nestor [Нижанківський, Нестор; Nyžankivs'kyj], b 31 August 1893 in Berezhany, Galicia, d 2 April 1940 in Łódź, Poland. Composer, pianist, teacher, and music critic; son of Ostap Nyzhankivsky, husband of Melaniia Nyzhankivska, and father of Oleh Nyzhankivsky. He received a PH D in history from Vienna University (1923) and graduated from the Prague State Conservatory (1927) in the master class of Vítězslav Novák. He returned to Galicia to teach piano and theory at the Lysenko Higher Institute of Music in Lviv (1931–9) and became one of the founders (and first chairman) of the Union of Ukrainian Professional Musicians (SUPROM). He died after falling ill during his emigration from Soviet-occupied Galicia. His compositions include ‘Piano Trio in E Minor’; for piano solo, ‘Prelude and Fugue on a Ukrainian Theme in C Minor,’ Little Suite, ‘Intermezzo in D Minor,’ and Variations on a Ukrainian Theme in F Sharp Minor; approximately 20 art songs for voice and piano, among them ‘Zasumui trembito’ (Trembita’s Dirge, text by Roman Kupchynsky), ‘Zhyta’ (Wheat Fields, text by Oleksander Oles), and ‘Ty liubchyku za horoiu’ (My Beloved beyond the Mountain, text by Uliana Kravchenko); 13 compositions for chorus, including ‘Naimyt’ (The Hireling, text by Ivan Franko) and ‘Halochka’ (text by Mykhailo Obidny); and arrangements of folk songs for chorus, published in the 1937 Chervona Kalyna collection.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bulka, Iu. Nestor Nyzhankivs’kyi (Kyiv 1972)

Ihor Sonevytsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]