Mykhailo Verbytskyi

Mykhailo Mykhailovych Verbytskyi ( ; March 4, 1815 – December 7, 1870), also anglicized as Michael Werbitzky, was a Ukrainian composer and a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. He is considered to be one of the first professional composers of Galicia. Biography Mykhailo Verbytskyi was born in Nadsiannia. Sources often differ as to the exact location of his birth, with some claiming he was born in Jawornik Ruski and christened 8 km away in Ulucz (the site of the oldest wooden church in Poland where his father was the local priest). Both are now located in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland. Verbytskyi was born into the family of a priest. He was left an orphan at the age of ten, and was raised from then on by his father’s brother, Bishop Ivan Snihurskyi. Snihurskyi took Mykhailo to live with him in Peremyshl, where his uncle was very active: founding the city’s first Ukrainian language printing press, published compilations of folklore and textbooks about the Ukrainian language. In 1818, Snihurskyi even founded a diak-teaching institute in the city, and ten years later, a cathedral choir and music school. In 1859 Verbytskyi received a parish in the village of Mlyny, Ya