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.”
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