Myroslav Skoryk

Myroslav Skoryk (1938–2020) was a Ukrainian composer and teacher. He was born in Lviv, Ukraine, then a part of Poland. His parents did not have special musical training, but his mother played piano and his father played the violin. Skoryk entered the Lviv Music School in 1945, but two years later his family were deported to Siberia, where Myroslav grew up. The family did not return to Lviv until 1955. Between 1955 and 1960 he studied at the Lviv Conservatory, There he received training in musical composition and music theory; his teachers included Stanislav Liudkevych and Roman Simovych. Skoryk’s final exam piece was Vesna ('Spring'), a cantata for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra that was based on verses by the Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko. Other piano pieces written during Skoryk's student years include a piano sonata, and V Karpatakh ('In the Carpathian Mountains'), also for solo piano. In 1960, Skoryk enrolled in the postgraduate research program at the Moscow Conservatory where he studied with the composer Dmitri Kabalevsky. He remained there for four years. During this time, Skoryk composed music in an array of styles: symphonic, chamber, and vocal. Some works from this period include the 'Suite in D Major for Strings', 'Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano', and 'Partita No. 1 for Strings' which quickly became popular, the 'Variations', 'Blues', and the popular 'Burlesque', which is performed in concert halls around the world. 'Burlesque' is a required work in some piano competitions, most notably the International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz in Kyiv, and as teaching piece. In 1963 Skoryk became the youngest member of the National Union of Composers of Ukraine. After graduating from the Moscow Conservatory in 1964, Skoryk, then 25, began his first teaching position, becoming Ukraine's youngest composition lecturer at the Lviv Conservatory, where he remained until 1966. He then accepted a position at the Kyiv Conservatory where he focused on teaching contemporary harmony techniques. He remained at the Kyiv Conservatory until 1988. In 1996 Skoryk moved with his family to Australia and obtained Australian citizenship, but later he returned to live in Ukraine. In 2011, he was appointed as the artistic director of the Kyiv Opera, a position he held until 2016. His music is contemporary in style and contains idioms from diverse sources including German, Welsh, English, and Eastern European artistic traditions. Skoryk was awarded the titles People's Artist of Ukraine and Hero of Ukraine.