Fedor Steshko
Fedor Steshko was a Ukrainian musicologist, music theorist, and teacher. He was born in Kamenka and began studying music at the age of seven at a church school attached to the Kyiv Theological Seminary, where he sang in the church choir. In 1888 he entered the Sofia Theological School and sang in the bishop’s choir at St. Michael’s Monastery. He continued his musical studies at the Kyiv Seminary and at S. Blumenfeld’s private school, where Nikolai Lysenko also taught. Steshko focused on music theory, studying with Lyubomirsky.
After graduating from the seminary in 1898, Steshko taught at a church school in Tarashcha and conducted the cathedral choir. Later, while living in the Far East, he organized a military regimental choir and took part in Vladivostok’s musical life. He served on the council of the local branch of the Imperial Music Society, conducted choirs, and taught music at several secondary schools and at a teachers’ institute. He also organized and performed in concerts of Ukrainian folk song.
In 1922 Steshko moved to Prague to continue his musical studies. From 1923 to 1926 he studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University and began teaching musicology at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute named for Mykhailo Drahomanov. He helped establish its music-pedagogy department, later headed its music-history department, and became a professor and member of the institute’s senate. After the institute closed in 1934, he led the music department of the Slavic Institute and initiated the creation of its Archive of Slavic Music, including its Ukrainian section.
Steshko researched Ukrainian church music and the history of church singing in Subcarpathian Rus, including liturgical works by composers from Transcarpathia. His publications include The First Ukrainian Music Prints and Sources for the History of the Early Period of Church Singing in Ukraine (both 1929), Church Music in Subcarpathian Rus (1936), and The First Ukrainian Church Compositions (1939). He also transcribed notation from old church books, contributed to Ukrainian and Czech encyclopedias, and edited five collections of songs by nineteenth-century German composers in Ukrainian translations. Over two decades of musicological work, he compiled a catalogue of Ukrainian musical literature and collected and organized works by Dmitry Bortniansky. Steshko died in Prague in 1944.