Stanyslav Liudkevych first studied composition with his mother, a pupil of Mykhailo Verbytsky who wrote the music to Ukraine’s national anthem. While at university, Liudkevych was a pupil of Sołtys at the Lemberg Conservatory. Then in Vienna, he studied with Alexander Zemlinsky, Hermann Grädener, and Guido Adler; even attending Hugo Riemann’s lectures in Germany. In 1908, he succeeded Anatole Vakhnianyn as director of the Lysenko Institute. During WorldWar I, Liudkevych was drafted into the Austrian army. Captured by the Russians, he spent time in Kazakhstan as a prisoner of war. In 1919, he resumed work at the institute in Lviv. In 1936, Liudkevych became head of the musicological commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. From 1940 to 1972 he taught at the Lviv State Conservatory. Despite being a 20th-century composer, Liudkevych maintained a post-romantic palette that was later tempered by Soviet neo-folklorism. In fact, under the Soviet regime his creative output dwindled. At one of the first meetings with the Communist Party in 1939, the composer is reputed to have quipped, “liberated [by the Communists]—there’s nothing one can doabout that…”