Mykola Mykolayovych Vilinsky (; 14 May 18889 September 1956) was a Soviet and Ukrainian composer who held senior chairs at the Odesa Conservatory and later the Kyiv Conservatory. He wrote articles on Ukrainian and Moldovan music, and was a music critic and an expert on the works of the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko.
Following the wishes of his father, Vilinsky was initially educated for a career as a lawyer, but then changed to study music at the Odesa Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1919. He taught and composed there for twenty years. During the Second World War he and his family was evacuated from Odesa to Tashkent, where he continued to teach and compose. After the end of the war, he returned to Ukraine and became a professor at the Kyiv Conservatory, where he remained until his death in 1956. His students included Kostiantyn Dankevych, Oleksandr Bilash, Oscar Feltsman, David Gershfeld, and Anton Mucha.
Vilinsky's output includes symphonic suites, music for piano, and arrangements for choir and solo voices of Ukrainian, Russian, Moldavian folk songs. His daughter, was also a professor of music and a composer.
Life
Early years and education
Mykola Mykolayovych Mykola was born on 2/14 May 1888, in Holta, in the Russian Empire, now part of the Ukrainian city of Pervomaisk. He had an older sister, Tamara. Vilinsky's mother Olena Petrovna was descended from the Baroque era composer Josse Boutmy, who belonged to a family of musicians from Ghent known as the Boutmy Dynasty. His father Mykola Oleksandrovych Vilinsky was the mayor of Ananiv. The family on his father's side was descended from a Polish nobleman, Tomasz Wiliński.
The Ukrainian writer Marko Vovchok, born Mariia Vilinskа may also have been related to the family. The so-called "golden soprano" of the Bolshoi Theatre, , and the musicologist and writer Alexander Ossovsky were both his cousins.
Vilinsky's mother was his first music teacher. He began to seriously engage in music on his own whilst at school in Ananiv, conducting the church choir and organizing the school's folk music orchestra. After he completed his school education in 1906, his father decided to prepare his son for a career in law, and Vilinsky entered the Faculty of Law of the Imperial Novorossian University in Odesa, where he graduated in 1912. For a short period he worked in the Odesa District Court.
Whilst still studying law, Vilinsky attended the Odesa Music School, where he studied composition under the Polish composers Witold Maliszewski and Witold Lutosławski. Maliszewski valued Vilinsky as one of his best students. When he and his family was forced to leave Odesa, attempted to take Vilinsky along with them. Despite the strictly enforced censorship that existed, Vilinsky and Maliszewski continued to correspond. In 1917 he finally abandoned the idea of a career in law to devote himself to music. Despite his studies being interrupted in 1916 by conscription into the army, he graduated from the Odesa Conservatory in 1919.
Career
During his career Vilinsky lived and worked in Odesa and Kyiv, separated by a period during the Second World War during which he was evacuated to Tashkent. Along with his work as a composer and teacher, he wrote articles on Ukrainian and Moldovan music, and was a reviewer, a music critic, and an editor, when he oversaw the publication of the complete works of the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko.
From 1920 to 1941, Vilinsky taught at the Odesa Conservatory, succeeding Malyshevsky. At Odesa his talent developed and he gained recognition as a composer. In 1926 he was promoted to the rank of professor, and in 1931 he became the head of the department of composition. In 1935 he became the director of the Odesa regional organization of the Union of Composers of Ukraine, his deputies being two of his students, and . Vilinsky was also a member of the board of the Union.
In 1941, Vilinskyi and his family evacuated to Tashkent. Along with Lev Revutsky, he worked as a professor at the Tashkent Conservatory. He remained there until 1944, when he returned to Ukraine. During the war, the Romanian authorities in occupied Odesa succeeded in permanently acquiring a number of Vilinsky's compositions, as well family documents and part of his music library.