Sokalsky, Petro

Sokalsky, Petro or Sokolsky [Сокальський, Петро; Sokal's'kyj], b 26 September 1832 in Kharkiv, d 14 April 1887 in Odesa. Composer, folklorist, musicologist, and music critic; brother of Ivan Sokalsky. He graduated in 1852 from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Kharkiv University and settled in 1858 in Odesa, where he worked as assistant editor of the newspaper Odesskii vestnik. He was active in the city’s musical life as a critic in the newspaper and a promoter for the development of musical institutions. His works include the operas Mazepa (1859), May Night (1876), and The Siege of Dubno (1878); 14 works of choral music; piano pieces; and art songs to words by Taras Shevchenko, Leonid Hlibov, and others. He also collected and studied Ukrainian folk songs. His research was published posthumously as Russkaia narodnaia muzyka, velikorusskaia i malorusskaia v ee stroenii melodicheskom i ritmicheskom i otlichiia ee ot osnov sovremennoi garmonicheskoi muzyki (Russian Folk Music, Great Russian and Ukrainian, Its Melodic and Rhythmic Structure, and Its Differentiation from the Principles of Contemporary Harmonic Music, 1888). A Ukrainian translation of this work, and a biography, by T. Karysheva, were published in Kyiv in 1959. A collection of his essays and reviews was published in Kyiv in 1977.

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