Alexander Koshetz

Alexander Koshetz (12 September 1875 – 21 September 1944) was a Ukrainian choral conductor, arranger, composer, ethnographer, writer, musicologist, and lecturer. He helped popularize Ukrainian music around the world. His name is sometimes transliterated as Oleksandr Koshyts (Ukrainian: Олександр Кошиць).

At one time, a performance of Koshetz's Ukrainian National Chorus held the world record for audience attendance, excluding sporting events. His performance also popularized Mykola Leontovych's "Shchedryk" in his concert, which Peter Wilhousky later translated into the popular "Carol of the Bells".

Koshetz was born in the village of Romashky in Kiev Guberniya. He graduated from the Kiev Theological Academy in 1901, then studied in the Lysenko School of Music and Drama, 1908–1910. He taught choral music at Kiev's Imperial Conservatory of Music, conducted the Sadovsky Theatre Orchestra, served as conductor and choirmaster of the Kiev Opera.

He also collected Ukrainian folk songs from central Ukrainian areas (notably around Kiev itself) as well as from the modern Russian area of Kuban, where he specially set out to see whether musical traditions of the Dnieper Cossacks are still present in their descendants, the Kuban Cossacks, who resettled there following the dissolution of the Zaporozhian Sich. In the latter case he too managed to collect a number of songs.

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