Mykol Vital’yevych Lysenko was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and folk-song collector who was born in 1842 and died in Kiev in 1912. He studied piano and theory in Kiev from the age of nine and continued his musical studies whilst reading for a Degree in Natural Sciences at Kiev University. Between 1874 and 1876, he learned orchestration from Rimsky-Korsakov in St. Petersburg.

Lysenko investigated Ukrainian folk music and its role in the expression of patriotism. He expressed his own political and patriotic ideals by publishing folk music and setting poems by such authors as Shevchenko, another well known nationalist. This active political life (he was imprisoned briefly in 1907) led to Lysenko being cold-shouldered by the Russian Musical Society, which had earlier welcomed him.

The extent of his nationalist pride can be discerned in the fate of his opera Taras Bul’ba, which was admired by Tchaikovsky and might have been performed in Moscow but for Lysenko’s stubborn refusal to allow a translation of the libretto from Ukrainian to Russian. Lysenko was respected in Ukrainian musical circles and received gifts in recognition of his compositions which he used to establish a Ukrainian School of Music. Gorky commented on the extent of public grief when Lysenko died, recognising a figure of importance to the nationalist movement if not to the wider musical world.

Lysenko was a good pianist and wrote many refined, small scale keyboard works, revealing the influence of Chopin. He uses brief musical statements without complex elaboration, but the characterisation is effective. His list of compositions also includes many songs. The origin of this Gavotte is a piano piece composed in 1888.