Mykola Leontovych was born on December 13, 1877, in the Monastyrok community, near the village of Selevyntsi, in the Podolia province of Ukraine. 

In Kamianets-Podilskyi Theological Seminary, he was educated as a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox church. But later he showed great interest in music and moved to St. Petersburg (Russia), where he learned music and became a choir conductor.

After the revolution of 1917 and the subsequent independence of Ukraine (which, unfortunately, did not last long at that time), Leontovych moved back to Ukraine, to Kyiv, to work at the Kyiv Conservatory and the Mykola Lysenko Institute of Music and Drama.

Mykola Leontovych had been working on his most famous arrangement of Ukrainian folklore — Shchedryk — for many years, with the first edition appearing in 1904 and the fifth — in 1919. The first public performance of Shchdryk took place in January of 1916.

In the last years of his life, after 1919, Leontovych moved to Tulchy with his family, where he started the first music school.

Mykola Leontovych was murdered on the night of 22-23 January 1921 when he was staying at his father’s house, where he has been visiting for the Eastern Orthodox Christmas.