Shchedryk

The story

"Shchedryk" is a Ukrainian shchedrivka, a song sung to wish a household well at the New Year; its name comes from the Ukrainian word for "bountiful", and in English it is known as "The Little Swallow". The four-note chant at its heart, moving within a minor third, is thought to be of prehistoric origin, older than Christianity in Ukraine, and belonged to a New Year then celebrated in March. With Christianity the New Year moved to January, and the song became tied to Shchedryi vechir, "Bountiful Evening", the eve of the Julian New Year (13 January in the Gregorian calendar), known as Malanka. On that night such well-wishing songs were sung across Ukraine, often by girls who went from house to house and were given treats. The old words were thought to have magical power.

The conductor Alexander Koshetz asked the composer and teacher Mykola Leontovych to write a piece on Ukrainian folk melodies for a Christmas concert. Leontovych took the four notes and the folk words of a well-wishing song from an anthology of Ukrainian folk melodies and made a new work for unaccompanied mixed choir, with the four-note figure repeated throughout as an ostinato; he returned to the song in several arrangements between 1901 and 1919. It is often said to have been first sung by students of Kyiv University on 25 December 1916, but its first performance was on 29 December 1916 in the Kyiv Merchants' Assembly Hall, now part of the National Philharmonic of Ukraine. It is the best known of all his works.

The newly independent Ukrainian government sent Koshetz's Ukrainian Republic Capella abroad in 1920 and 1921 to make Ukrainian music known. The choir gave more than 1,000 concerts in Europe and the Americas, sang "Shchedryk" at Carnegie Hall on 5 October 1922; the first recording was made in New York that month for Brunswick Records. The American composer and teacher Peter J. Wilhousky of NBC Radio then wrote English words of his own about ringing bells, suggested by the ostinato and unrelated to the Ukrainian text, and published and copyrighted them in 1936 as "Carol of the Bells". Sung by his choirs at Christmas from the late 1930s, the melody became closely associated with Christmas in the English-speaking world.

In Ukraine the song kept its New Year meaning and is sung again on the eve of the Julian New Year rather than as a Christmas carol. It is heard in films from the lost "Song of the Flame" (1930) to the Ukrainian drama "Carol of the Bells" (2022), where children sing it as a sign of peace and hope. In 2023, because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Eurovision Song Contest was held in Liverpool rather than in Ukraine, and "Shchedryk" was sung at the second semi-final by the Ukrainian singers Zlata Dziunka and Mariya Yaremchuk.

What it says

A well-wishing song for the turn of the year. A swallow flies into the household and announces that the family will prosper, with plenty to come in the spring. It is a song of good fortune and hope, not of Christmas.

The words