The article covers the activities of ethnographer, cultural and public figure, teacher Klyment Kvitka (1880-1953). Emphasis is placed on the significant results of his research work as an ethnographer, musicologist-folklorist, who collected and systematized more than six thousand Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian folk songs. He recorded, actively using the technical means of the time, the voices of Ivan Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, kobzar Hnat Honcharenko and other Ukrainian artists, having preserved them for future generations. Together with Lesia Ukrainka he was actively involved in the study and preservation of original works of kobzars. Klyment Kvitka has written many scientific works on the history and theory of musical folklore, created a number of textbooks and manuals. It is noted that after Klyment Kvitka's marriage he had to go through a categorically negative attitude towards himself on the part of Lesia's mother, Olena Pchilka, whom he initially idealized as a writer and public figure. The mother complained that Klyment, who had no financial means and was nine years younger than his daughter, would not be able to support Lesia, who needed constant treatment. She spoke of Klyment as a beggar who "encroaches on the money of the Kosachi". But her mother's negative attitude towards Klyment did not change Lesia's attitude towards him, except in the direction of even greater affection. Klyment Kvitka, in turn, knew every creative idea of his wife, who called him "a friend of her ideas."

The article also describes that despite the further exacerbation of Lesia's illness, the great poetess's marriage years were the period of the highest rise of her work: "Forest Song" (1911), "Fireplace Master" (1912), "Boyar’s wife" (1913). While writing "The Forest Song" in Kutaisi, which Lesia wrote with a manic state of mind, she and Kvitka constantly sang folk motifs. Some literary critics believe that it was Kvitka who became Lukash's prototype in "The Forest Song".

It is investigated that the attention to the works of Klyment Kvitka was caused by the fact that his ethnographic research is what is most valued in the world today: how folk songs can help to understand the development of ethnic groups, their emigration and assimilation.

Although in the collective memory of Ukrainian people he remained, probably, first of all Lesia Ukrainka's husband. But this idea of Klyment Kvitka is extremely simplistic and incorrect. It was stated that during the national liberation struggle in the autumn of 1917th K. Kvitka was elected Deputy Secretary General of the Judiciary of the Ukrainian Central Rada, and later - Deputy Minister of Justice of the Ukrainian People's Republic. K. Kvitka was a graduate of the Law Department of Kyiv University. In 1920, working as a professor at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, he founded the Department of Musical Ethnography.

He combined teaching activities at Mykola Lysenko Kyiv Institute. Klyment Kvitka's scientific activity ensured the rise of Ukrainian folklore to an unprecedented high level. Klyment Kvitka emphasized that ethnography should become a state affair. K. Kvitka proved that folk song retains the code features of our ancestors. Exploring the nature of folk songs, preserving their authenticity, we can better study not only the ancient culture, but also the spiritual world, the way of thinking of ancestors. In addition, Klyment Kvitka researched Ukrainian songs in the context of songs of the peoples of Europe and Asia.

When writing the article, we used general historical (comparative and historical, retrospective) methods. The method of source study analysis was also applied.

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