Borys Lyatoshynsky is the founder of the modern Ukrainian compositional tradition. His language joins late-Romantic expression (like Wagner), Expressionist tension (like Schoenberg), and the inflections of the Carpathians and Hutsul tradition.
Key works: five symphonies (especially the Second, Third (originally with the epigraph “Peace will conquer war”), and Fifth Slavic); the opera The Golden Ring (1930) on Franko's Zakhar Berkut; symphonic poems; string quartets. Lyatoshynsky suffered brutal censorship attacks in the 1940s–50s — the Third Symphony was accused of “formalism” and he was forced to rewrite it. As a teacher at the Kyiv Conservatory he mentored Valentyn Silvestrov, Leonid Hrabovsky, and Ivan Karabyts — an entire generation of the Ukrainian avant-garde school.
