A Ukrainian Christmas carol: Shchedryk (a.k.a. Carol of the Bells)

[Emrys]

Based on a traditional Ukranian shchedrivka, a seasonal folk song originally celebrating the solstice or New Year, and still more commonly sung in Ukraine on January 13 (the old Julian New Year's Eve) than at Christmas, this piece was arranged in the form familiar worldwide by Mykola Leontovych, a trained priest as well as a teacher, composer, conductor, chorist and multi-instrumentalist, who was murdered by a Soviet assassin in 1921 as a troublesome member of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, which led to his becoming a martyr of the Eastern Orthodox Ukrainian Church. In 2018, he was honoured with the erection of a statue in Pokrovsk, which has been in the news recently, where he spent a productive period of his career as a teacher.

This remarkable performance from a concert in Maastricht, the Netherlands on November 17 was prompted when soloist Anna Reker asked Dutch conductor and violinist André Rieu if they could perform the song as a tribute to her countrypeople in their time of war. Rieu immediately agreed.

"Shchedryk" means the bird the swallow, and the lyrics of the widely known English-language "Carol of the Bells" have nothing in common with those of the Ukrainian one, which can be translated as:

Shchedryk, shchedryk, shchedrivochka,
A swallow has flown,

It began to twitter,
And call the master:

“Come out, come out, O Master,
Take a look at the sheep pen,

There the ewes have given birth,
And the lambkins have been born,

All your goods are great,
And you will be rich

Though not money, it is chaff —
You have a dark-eyebrowed wife

Shchedryk, shchedryk, shchedrivochka,
A swallow has flown.

X-Posted in Music Appreciation - https://www.democraticunderground.com/1034155910

[debm55]

1. Beautiful . Dyakuna, Emrys,(Thanks, Emrys)

Last edited Sun Dec 7, 2025, 08:55 PM - Edit history (1)

[Emrys]

2. You're welcome. I obviously loved it myself.

There's some more history of the composer and the background of the piece in the replies at the version of the post in Music Appreciation.

[Wednesdays]

3. I did a bit of research about the piece for my church choir

Leontovych doesn't get nearly the credit he should. The choral arrangement he published in 1914 is exactly the same (aside from the text) that Peter Wilhousky used in his adaptation in the 1930's. But it's Wilhousky who nearly always gets all the credit.

And Carol of the Bells was relatively unknown until the early 1970's, when this commercial came out at Christmas/New Year's time and then the song suddenly became popular:

I remember that commercial when it first aired!

[Emrys]

4. Thanks. If you check out the version of this OP in Music Appreciation,

the first reply adds some more background about "Shchedryk", its composer and the course of the piece's entry into the canon.

From 1919 onward, Oleksander Koshyts, the conductor who commissioned Leontovych to compose "Shchedryk", toured it around the world in over 1,000 concerts, including a sold-out one in Carnegie Hall. Having been in the audience for that performance, Wilhousky, who was of Ukrainian descent, wrote the first English-language version of the lyrics in 2022.

My wife, a Catholic, was very familiar with the "Carol of the Bells" version from performances at Christmas in her youth, when it was a very popular part of the repertoire.

[some_of_us_are_sane]

5. Breathtakingly beautiful!

My eyes are glistening with tears................. so ethereally magical!