Senytsia, Pavlo

Senytsia, Pavlo [Сениця, Павло; Senycja], b 23 September 1879 in Maksymivka, Pereiaslav county, Poltava gubernia, d 3 July 1960 in Moscow. Musicologist, composer, and teacher. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory (1909) and taught in several music schools in Moscow (1905–15). He later (1921–31) worked as a research associate for the Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SSR and served as secretary of the ethnographic division of the State Institute of Music Education (1923–39). His major musicological studies include Suchasna ukraïns'ka muzyka (Contemporary Ukrainian Music, 1923) and Ukraïns’ka vokal'na muzyka (Ukrainian Vocal Music, 1925). His musical works include the operas Life Is a Dream (based on Calderón) and The Servant Girl (based on Taras Shevchenko, 1913–16); two symphonies (1905, 1912); an overture (1908); seven string quartets; approximately 50 works of choral music to texts by Shevchenko, Mykola Bazhan, and others; and approximately 100 solo art songs to texts by Shevchenko, Pavlo Tychyna, Maksym Rylsky, and others.

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