Shchedryk (The Bell Carol)

About this arrangement

Leontovych’s choral setting in G minor, played through and then built up again. The four-note ostinato, B flat, A, B flat, G, starts alone in the right hand and runs through almost every bar. The other voices enter one at a time, as in the choir: left-hand octaves from bar 5, bass and tenor from bar 9, and four-part chords from bar 13. In bars 17 to 20 the right hand doubles the ostinato a third higher in octaves over a moving tenor; in bars 21 to 24 the tune is on top and the left hand has the ostinato in octaves. Bars 25 to 28 are rising octave scales. From bar 33 it returns louder, over broken left-hand octaves, with the tune an octave higher at fortissimo, before the parts fall away to a quiet D, C, D, G.

Practice tip: Learn the ostinato until your hand plays it without thinking: crotchet, two quavers, crotchet, light and exactly in time, like a small bell. In the octave passages from bar 17 and bar 33 keep the wrist loose and the thumb light so the top notes ring. Build steadily to the fortissimo at bar 37, then let it die away.

A short history

Shchedryk is a shchedrivka, a Ukrainian well-wishing song for the New Year. In it a swallow flies into a house and calls the master out to hear what a rich year lies ahead: lambs in the fold, good money for his goods and a black-browed wife. It was sung on the eve of the old-style New Year, 13 January by today’s calendar, and its four-note chant inside a minor third is thought to be far older than the Christian calendar.

The composer and choirmaster Mykola Leontovych made the chant into a short work for unaccompanied choir, revising it over many years. It was first performed in Kyiv on 29 December 1916, and Alexander Koshetz’s Ukrainian National Chorus later took it on tour, singing it at Carnegie Hall in New York on 5 October 1922.

In 1936 the American conductor Peter Wilhousky published English words, Carol of the Bells, that made the tune a Christmas favourite. His words and his arrangement are still in copyright, so neither is used here: this is a new piano arrangement of Leontovych’s original.

Quick facts

Tune

Mykola Leontovych (first version 1901, revised to 1919, first performed 1916), from a Ukrainian New Year chant

Level

Advanced (concert arrangements, full texture)

Key

G minor

Time signature

3/4

Length

48 bars

Tempo

Lightly, like bells, crotchet = 126

Hands

Both hands on the grand staff: right hand on the treble staff, left hand on the bass staff

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal, church and classroom use

Questions and answers