Prach, Ivan

Prach, Ivan or Práč, Johann Gottfried [Прач, Іван; Prač], b ca 1750 in Silesia, d ca 1818 in Saint Petersburg. Composer, pianist, teacher, and ethnographer. A Czech by birth, he moved to Saint Petersburg in the late 1770s to teach piano. He became one of the first collectors and arrangers of Russian and Ukrainian folk songs, and published the landmark Sobranie russkikh narodnykh pesen s ikh golosami (A Collection of Russian Folk Songs with Vocal Parts) in 1790 (with subsequent editions in 1806, 1815, and 1896). This work, containing Ukrainian folk songs in separate sections subtitled ‘Songs of Little Russia,’ interpreted folk music in a Western style rather than using traditional harmonies, and provided subsequent Russian composers (including Peter Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov) with a source of musical themes for their works. Ludwig van Beethoven, who owned a copy of the 2nd edition, used the melody of Semen Klymovsky’s song ‘The Cossack Rode beyond the Danube’ in two of his chamber works.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]