The Incredible Secret of Shchedryk: From Ancient Symbols to Modern Trends

Traditionally, when watching Home Alone on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, we pay attention not only to the dynamic plot and Donald Trump. The musical accompaniment of the films is organically intertwined with a familiar Christmas motif known worldwide as Carol of the Bells. The American composer John Williams arranged it especially for the movie. But this is only one version: Carol of the Bells can be heard in classical, jazz and even heavy metal arrangements. From the popular violinist Lindsey Stirling and the the Pentatonix cappella choir to the cult R&B band Destiny’s Child with its lead singer Beyoncé, there is a fair number of those who have performed this piece. Without Carol of the Bells, it would be hard to conceive Christmas not only in America but all over the world.

That said, not everyone knows that this “Christmas soundtrack” was first performed on American soil a little over a centenary ago. And that it was written on Ukrainian soil. The exact time and place are unknown because the roots of the work date back to the ancient pre-Christian era. Back then, knowing nothing about the birth of Jesus, we celebrated the New Year in spring, when the first birds began to return from the south. That’s how this line came about: “Shchedryk, shchedryk, shchedrivochka, a little swallow flew.” People used to greet each other with these songs, wishing each other all the best for the coming year. Both faith and calendars have changed, but these words, along with a simple four-note musical motif, have survived in folk traditions.

The modern era has brought the fashion of recording and publishing folklore. However, the elusive Shchedryk did not feature on the pages of ethnographic collections for a long time, as if biding its time. But just a few years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, a series of fantastic events took place when, thanks to the energy of young artists from different parts of Ukraine, this ancient code conquered the whole world.

The shchedrivka (a traditional carol sang on New Year’s eve) was first heard in his native village of Krasnopil (now the Berdychiv district of the Zhytomyr region) and recorded by the writer Klym Polishchuk, who was one of the famous representatives of the Executed Renaissance (a literary and artistic generation of Ukrainians exterminated during the Soviet times). In 1913, he published this folk gem in the Collection of the Best Ukrainian Songs with Notes, thus becoming the first to pave the triumphant way for Shchedryk.

The editor of the 1913 collection was the famous Kyiv composer and conductor Oleksandr Koshyts. At that time, he was the head of the student choir of St. Volodymyr’s University (now the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv). Preoccupied with the search for new repertoire for the choir, Koshyts maintained ties with many Ukrainian composers of the time who were preparing high-quality arrangements of folk songs. One of the most brilliant composers among Oleksandr Koshyts’s acquaintances was Mykola Leontovych from Podillia, an ordinary teacher who devoted his entire life to the development of Ukrainian choral art. Wherever his fate took him — whether to Tulchyn in the Vinnytsia region or to Hryshyn in the Donetsk region (the modern city of Pokrovsk, near which fierce battles with Russian aggressors are now taking place) — he created folk singing group of children, peasants and workers. Leontovych’s arrangements of folk songs being already well known in Ukraine at that time, Oleksandr Koshyts did not hesitate to send him the collection to let his colleague look for a source of inspiration in it.

At that time, Mykola Leontovych himself felt an urgent need for new work. Although the composer was already in his thirties, he did not stop taking private lessons in music theory. Nowadays, this would be called a successful example of lifelong learning, a popular (and necessary) approach in contemporary pedagogy. For Leontovych, however, it was not just another fashionable expression but a need to constantly improve his skills.

Leontovych’s mentor was his peer, a talented music teacher from Kharkiv, Boleslav Yavorskyi. It was he who revealed to his student the richness of the creative heritage of European composers, especially Johann Sebastian Bach. Learning was not always easy: for a long time, Leontovych considered the composition of folk songs with their verse logic inviolable, did not approve ofі “handling the material liberally,” so Yavorskyi had to invent new tasks to unleash the composer’s creative potential to a greater extent. Here is how Yavorskyi described his pedagogical approach: “The tune should be only a ‘starting point’ for the development of the material, the tune should dissolve into the melody of the melody — the melody that the composer creates.” Therefore, Leontovych’s next home assignment was to remake a folk song in such a way that the constant motif varied, changed and was supplemented with new sounds and supporting voices during each repetition.

The homework stretched on for years as Mykola Leontovych was very thorough and self-critical. It was not until 1913 that he saw the material he was looking for in the said collection — the melody of Shchedryk, which in the folk version consisted of only four notes. And it was here that the composer’s talent was revealed: he actually created a completely independent work in which he ingeniously combined the spirit of Ukrainian folklore and the principles of academic music.

Finally satisfied with the result of his creative search, Leontovych sent his Shchedryk to Oleksandr Koshyts. The latter, having appreciated the work with a masterful eye, immediately learned it with the university choir. And at the end of December 1916, just in time for the Christmas and New Year’s cycle of holidays, Kyiv residents listened with bated breath to the musical magic of Shchedryk. It resembled a glimmer of light that dispersed the heavy clouds of World War I that was in full swing.

You can’t always believe in coincidence, but this was the case when the sounds of Shchedryk awakened the ancient spirit of the people. No wonder there is a saying: “The way you meet the New Year is the way you will spend it.” The following year, 1917, turned out to be extremely encouraging and decisive for our country: the “prison of nations,” the Russian Empire, collapsed, and Ukraine regained its statehood. Not only did its laws and authorities begin to take shape, but so did its educational, scientific and artistic institutions. Ukrainians were able to freely create and develop everything they had been deprived of for a century and a half. In the tumultuous year of 1919, the Ukrainian Republican Chapel was founded by the renowned composer Oleksandr Koshyts with the support of the leader of Ukraine, Symon Petliura. This became part of the cultural diplomacy of the young state: it was necessary to show the whole world, especially the leading Western powers, that Ukraine was not an “invention of the Austrian General Staff,” as the Moscow imperialists stubbornly argued, but a country with ancient historical roots and an incredible original culture. Soon, the Republican Chapel’s grand tour began: Prague, Brussels, Paris, Vienna — Oleksandr Koshyts’ team was greeted with enthusiasm everywhere. Of course, the director of the chapel used mostly works he was already familiar with, and among them all, Shchedryk evoked a tremendous response in the hearts of Europeans. As one Belgian newspaper noted, “The success of the premiere concert was resounding. At the request of the insistent audience, the Christmas carol Shchedryk and two folk songs had to be performed as an encore, so conductor Koshyts had to bring his singers on stage again.” The only thing that was upsetting was the difficult title. “Strong women sobbed like men because they could not pronounce the title of one of the most beautiful songs on the program, Shchedryk,” a London newspaper wrote.

And then Shchedryk, together with the Ukrainian Republican Chapel, crossed the Atlantic Ocean to bring the uniqueness of Ukrainian music to American audiences. For two months, they performed in more than 30 cities in the United States. The most important performance took place at Carnegie Hall, New York in October 1922. Many American homes probably continued hearing the melodious Shchedryk being sung by enthusiastic listeners later.

The outlook in Ukraine at that time, however, was becoming increasingly gloomy. Russian communists and monarchists were taking turns destroying its freedom. In the midst of the Republican Chapel’s tour in January 1921, Mykola Leontovych, the author of Shchedryk, was murdered by a Bolshevik agent in his parents’ house in Podillia: the enormous success of his work abroad clearly displeased the new occupiers. And the following year, shortly after the triumph of the Republican Chapel in America, Ukraine was deprived of its independence and drawn into the Soviet Union. Subsequently, during Stalin’s “great terror,” Klym Polishchuk, the discoverer of Shchedryk, was shot dead in the notorious Sandarmokh tract. This was a deliberate attempt to erase the Ukrainian cultural code.

But Shchedryk had gotten such a firm foothold on American soil that it continued its cultural and diplomatic mission even in times of statelessness. During the tour of the Republican Chapel, among many other listeners, it was heard by Petro (Peter) Wilhousky, the son of Ukrainian migrants who was also fond of choral singing. It was Wilhousky who, thanks to new technologies, gave Shchedryk’s popularity a second wind. While working for the NBC radio company, in 1936 he came up with an English text for Leontovych’s music. That’s how Carol of the Bells came to be because the high notes that the piece is so rich in reminded Wilhousky of the sound of Christmas bells, those same Jingle Bells sung about in another Christmas song. Thus, the work became even closer and more understandable to the English-speaking audience. Wilhousky’s text was not a translation of the Ukrainian original source, but it also reflected a positive and bright mood on the eve of the holiday. And it was this message that the NBC Symphony Orchestra sought to convey to Americans during the daunting years of World War II, which soon spread across the globe. In this way, Shchedryk healed wounded souls not only in Ukraine but also across the ocean. As it continues to do today, giving hope in an era of despondency, wars and pandemics.

The secret of Shchedryk is its profound simplicity, musical skill and versatility, which have allowed the work to become a true masterpiece of the global scale. The attention to it is enormous. In particular, in the now frontline town of Pokrovsk, to which Mykola Leontovych devoted many years of his life, creativity and organizational talent. Before the full-scale Russian invasion, the Shchedryk Fest all-Ukrainian chor competition took place here, and the very swallow that inspired this incredible story was even added to the updated city coat of arms. May the winged messengers of revival and peaceful skies come to this suffering soil, as well as to the entire Ukrainian land. And may the eternal Ukrainian Shchedryk be heard in hundreds of different languages all over the world, on Christmas Eve.