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The Ukrainian folk song that became a symbol of freedom and a popular U.S. Christmas carol [1]
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Date: 2022-12-25
The song’s title is derived from the Ukrainian word “shchedryj,” or bountiful. The song originally had nothing to do with Christmas. Instead, it was one of the traditional “winter well-wishing songs” sung in Ukrainian villages on Jan. 13—New Year’s Eve on the Julian calendar —by young girls going house to house. The girls sang the folk chant predicting good fortune for the New Year, and were rewarded with baked goods and other treats.
The original lyrics tell the tale of a swallow flying into a household and calling out to the master of the home and describing to him all the wealth that he will possess in the upcoming year—healthy livestock, money, and a beautiful wife, according to cultural anthropologist Anthony Potoczniak , who is of Ukrainian descent. He said the swallow “is a herald of spring coming.”
Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych adapted the folk chant to create a choral masterpiece—with a haunting recurring four-note motif as an ostinato, a c ontinually repeated musical phrase or rhythm —on a commission from Oleksander Koshyts, conductor of the Ukrainian Republican Kapelle. It was first performed in December 1916 at the Kyiv Philharmonic.
Here is a video of the original version of Leontovych’s composition with the Ukrainian lyrics and an English translation:
Leontovych adapted the folk song at a time of political and social upheaval in Ukraine. The tsarist Russian regime that had ruled Ukraine was collapsing, and Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks eventually took power in St. Petersburg in late 1917.
On Jan. 22, 1918, Ukraine declared its independence from Russia, establishing the Ukrainian People’s Republic, with its capital in Kyiv. The Bolsheviks set up a rival Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in eastern Ukraine with Kharkiv as its capital. In January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference began with the aim of drawing up post-World War I European boundaries. Ukrainian President Symon Petliura decided to engage in cultural diplomacy to make Ukraine’s case for international recognition.
In the program notes for a Dec. 4 Carnegie Hall concert “Notes From Ukraine,” Peresunko wrote:
At this moment in history, the world did not know much about Ukraine. Centuries of Russian propaganda had declared that Ukrainians and Russians were one people. And to this end, the Bolsheviks who seized power in Moscow immediately launched a full-scale offensive on Kyiv. In hopes of persuading the West to support Ukraine, Petliura launched a mission of cultural diplomacy. In January 1919, Petliura sent a choir on tour throughout Europe to demonstrate with song the difference between the Ukrainian people and the Russian people and to promote Ukraine’s right to be independent.”
The Ukrainian National Chorus, under Koshyts direction, left Kyiv to begin its tour on Feb. 4, 1919, a day before the Red Army captured the city. Over the next two years, the choir performed hundreds of concerts in 45 cities in 10 European countries, and at each concert its members handed out brochures about their country and sang what would become the country’s national anthem: “The glory and freedom of Ukraine has not yet perished.”
The standout hit of their repertoire was “Shchedryk,” which received standing ovations and demands for encores from audiences everywhere. The Brussels-based newspaper Le XX Siecle called it “a masterpiece of folk art.”
But the Paris Peace Conference did not result in diplomatic recognition or military support for the independent Ukrainian state. In December 1922, Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union, with Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania acquiring some territory in western Ukraine.
The composer Leontovych was killed at his father’s home on Jan. 23, 1921, by an agent of the Cheka, the early Soviet secret police and forerunner of the NKVD and KGB. His murder was part of a campaign by Soviet Russia to destroy Ukraine’s intelligentsia. When Stalin came to power, his music was banned as “irrelevant” and would not be performed again in the USSR until the late 1950s.
Despite losing their homeland, the Ukrainian National Chorus launched a tour of the United States in 1922. “Shchedryk” was performed for the first time in North America on Oct. 5, 1922, to a sold-out audience at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The chorus would perform in 36 states and 115 cities to rave reviews.
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