[1] When Kyrylo Stetsenko was aged 10, his maternal uncle Danylo Horyanskyi took him to study at the Saint Sophia Church School, where the boy was enrolled for five years, from 1892 to 1897.

[1] Finishing his school education in 1897, Stetsenko began to attend the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary.

The young composer was greatly honoured when, during the opening ceremony of the monument to Ivan Kotliarevsky in Poltava, Lysenko's choir performed Stetsenko's composition Burlaka.

Stetsenko was complicit in the publication of his own choral arrangement of the Ukrainian national anthem without Russian censor approval in 1911.

When the Ukrainian People's Republic was declared, Stetsenko was made head of the Music Section in the Ministry of Education.

One choir was led by composer Oleksandr Koshyts toured Europe and North America to promote Ukraine as an independent nation.

She escaped capture by the Soviets during WWII and lived in a Displaced Persons camp in Austria for a number of years before immigrating to United States.

[4] In his works and activity, Stetsenko continued the national focus in Ukrainian music, that was started by Mykola Lysenko.

Stetsenko composed over 30 solo vocal works to the words by Ukrainian poets Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Pavlo Hrabovsky, Oleksandr Oles and others.

He wrote 42 art songs, over 100 sacred and secular choral pieces, including two liturgies and a requiem, and music to a dozen stage works.