The catchy tune of Carol of the Bells is likely to sound instantly familiar and evoke Christmas movies such as Home Alone, but those humming along might have little inkling as to the music’s origins.
Used in countless holiday films and even performed by The Muppets, Carol of the Bells, a staple in Western pop culture, stemmed from an early bid for Ukrainian independence.
The melody is a Ukrainian song called Shchedryk, or “New Year’s carol,” written by composer Mykola Leontovych and first performed in Kyiv on Christmas in 1916.
Photo: AFP
This Christmas Eve, the Ukrainian Radio Choir were to perform the piece at Kyiv’s Philharmonic at a sold-out concert that retreads some of that musical history. It comes as Ukraine celebrates Christmas on Dec. 25 for the first time ever — in sync with the West — instead of on Jan. 7 as in Russia.
The concert in Kyiv yesterday was to recreate the first US concert performance of the Shchedryk, at a time when Ukraine was in a fragile state of independence after World War I.
The Ukrainian People’s Republic had declared independence from Russia in 1918, led by nationalist politician Symon Petlyura.
To bolster the republic’s standing, Petlyura decided to send the Ukrainian National Choir on a world tour.
“Petlyura wanted to persuade the Western entente to recognize Ukraine’s independence, and so he initiated this project of musical diplomacy,” said Tina Peresunko, who helped organize yesterday’s concert.
The cultural researcher has written a book about Shchedryk and its links to Ukraine’s struggle for independence.
The Ukrainian National Choir traveled to western Europe in 1919, then went to the US, where Shchedryk had its national premiere at the Carnegie Hall in New York in October 1922.
Petlyura aimed “through song, through culture, through Ukraine’s thousand-year-old folklore ... to show that we are a nation, we are not Russians,” Peresunko said.
“The idea was through song to convey the right of Ukrainian people to independence,” she said. “And it’s very symbolic that it was Shchedryk, known to the world now as Carol of the Bells, became the hit of that tour.”
Ultimately, though, Petlyura’s musical diplomacy did not work and Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union. The original choir’s singers remained in the US as emigres, fearing arrest by the Soviets.
The composer of Shchedryk never enjoyed the worldwide reaction to his piece: He was fatally shot at his father’s house in 1921 by a Soviet agent, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy said.
Yet his music lived on.
In 1936, an American with Ukrainian roots, Peter Wilhousky, took Shchedryk’s music and wrote English lyrics titled Carol of the Bells, making it synonymous with Christmas.
Ahead of yesterday’s concert, Ukrainian Radio Choir conductor Yuliya Tkach was leading a rehearsal in Kyiv, with singers wrapped up in scarves and jackets.
“Is it heated in here?” she asked at one point.
They were about to perform Shchedryk when an air raid siren sounded and they had to go down to a cellar.
Dressed in a traditional embroidered blouse, Tkach drew parallels between the turbulent time of the early performances of Shchedryk and now.
“Then there was a war, then there was a real struggle resulting in the Ukrainian People’s Republic,” she said. “Now this historical spiral is repeating itself.”
The Kyiv concert was to recreate part of the program from the first US concert which featured Shchedryk.
Tkach said the song is special to her: “First of all it’s symbolic of Christmas holidays, secondly it is also about presenting Ukraine to the world, and thirdly, Mykola Leontovych is a composer dear to me.”
The concert was also to feature other songs from the original choir’s world tour, some now rarely heard. Peresunko scoured archives for the sheet music, some of which were only available in one copy.
“It’s an extremely interesting program,” Tkach said. “Some of the works were just a revelation to me.”
The conductor said she would also like to take her choir on a tour abroad to “present the same repertoire to the world at this difficult time for Ukraine.”
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person