Alexander Koshetz

Alexander Antonovich Koshetz (Russian: Александр Антонович Кошиц; also transliterated as Oleksandr Antonovych Koshyts (Ukrainian: Олександр Антонович Кошиць); 12 September 1875 – 21 September 1944) was a Ukrainian choral conductor, arranger, composer, ethnographer, writer, musicologist, and lecturer. Koshetz built a prominent conducting career in Kyiv, before going on to be one of the most prominent international promoters of Ukrainian music worldwide. He is best known for his promotion of Mykola Leontovych's "Shchedryk", the precursor to the Christmas song Carol of the Bells, during his worldwide tour with the Ukrainian Republican Capella.

Koshetz was born in the Kiev Governorate into a family of priests, but deviated from his family into a musical career and attended the Kiev Theological Academy. At the academy, he helped promote fellow Ukrainian composer Artemy Vedel as the student-conductor of the academy choir, which placed him among the first in the 20th century to revive Vedel's music after censorship. He then went on to teach choral music until 1917 with the formation of the Ukrainian People's Republic, and in 1919 was asked by Symon Petliura to co-head to Ukrainian Republican Capella, an ensemble tasked with raising awareness of the Ukrainian cause abroad through a world concert tour. The Capella performed 207 concerts across 74 halls throughout Europe before embarking on a tour of the Americas that covered over 400 concerts in more than 150 cities across the area. It was during this tour at Carnegie Hall in the United States on 5 October 1922 that Koshehtz introduced Mykola Leontovych's "Shchedryk" to American audiences. This performance was later adapted by American composer Peter J. Wilhousky in 1936 into the widely known Christmas song "Carol of the Bells".

Following the collapse of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Ukrainian Republican Capella also ceased to exist without state aid quotas, and Koshetz was barred from returning to the now Soviet-controlled Ukraine. He resettled in New York City in 1926, where he continued to compose, arrange, and record Ukrainian music to promote to an international audience. He spent his later years teaching in Winnipeg, Canada, where he died in 1944 in exile. He has since been commemorated by the O. Koshetz Choir in Winnipeg, and has had numerous streets, coins, and plaques named after him in Ukraine.

Read more about this composer on Wikipedia.