Hnatyshyn, Andriy

Composer and conductor Andrij Hnatyschyn (b. 1906, Chyzhykiv, Ukraine, d. 1995, Vienna, Austria) studied at the Ukrainian Academic Gymnasium in Lviv, the Lviv Theological Academy and the Lysenko Music Institute. He worked for the Prosvita educational society in villages near Lviv. Awarded a scholarship by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, he continued his music studies at the Neues Wiener Konservatorium and graduated in 1934. From 1931 until the Nazi occupation of Austria, Hnatyschyn directed the choir of St. Barbara’s Ukrainian Catholic church in Vienna. He spent part of the Second World War in Berlin, where he conducted the choir of the local Ukrainian Catholic parish. Following the war he returned to Vienna, and from 1954 until the end of his life he again directed the choir of St. Barbara’s, which was the center of Ukrainian cultural life in the city. Hnatyschyn used the choir as a platform for promoting Ukrainian music, particularly through recordings and performances on Austrian radio. Beginning in the 1990s he was able to travel once again to Ukraine, and in 1994 the Liatoshynsky Chamber Choir gave a concert of his works in Kyiv. At the time Hnatyschyn also began transferring his archive to the Vernadsky National Library.

Hnatyschyn was primarily a composer of sacred music, including numerous liturgies and cantatas. He also produced orchestral suites, an opera, chamber pieces for violin and piano, a piano trio and string quartet, and choral arrangements.