Instrumentation: Marimba (4.3 octave)
Difficulty: Intermediate-Advanced
Duration: 4:30
Price: $8.00
 

Perhaps one of the most famous 4-note motifs since Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Carol of the Bells has one of the most recognizable melodies, especially in the Christmas music idiom. Like many Christmas songs, this one started as a secular tune, only to have added lyrics later to relate it to the Christian holiday.

The tune was originally composed in 1916 by Ukranian composer, Mykola Leontovych. Leontovych was commissioned to write a song based off traditional Ukranian folk melodies. Using the four notes and original folk lyrics of a well-wishing song he found in an anthology of Ukrainian folk melodies, Leontovych created a completely new work for choir – Shchedryk. The song tells the tale of a swallow flying into a household to proclaim the plentiful year that the family will have. It was first performed in the Ukraine on the night of January 13, 1916. Although this date is 12 days after New Years Day on the Gregorian calendar, Shchedryk's premiere was not actually a belated New Years celebration. While the Gregorian calendar is the most used calendar internationally, Orthodox Churches in Ukraine continue to use to Julian calendar. According to the Julian calendar, January 13 was considered New Year's Eve in the year 1916.

The song was sung by the Ukranian National Chorus to promote Ukranian music in major cultural centers in the West. The chorus did not limit the performance of Shchedryk to the Julian New Year and it was added to the regular repertoire of the group. The first performance of Shchedryk in the United States was October 5th, 1921 in Carnegie Hall by the same group.

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When American choir director and arranger Peter Wilhousky heard Leontovych’s choral work, it reminded him of bells; so he wrote new lyrics to convey that imagery for his choir (Carol of the Bells).   He copyrighted the new lyrics in 1936 and also published the song, despite the fact that the work was published almost two decades earlier in Soviet Ukraine. In the late 1930s, several choirs that Wilhousky directed began performing his Anglicized arrangement during the Christmas holiday season, helping cement it into the American holiday tradition.

This solo version of the tune starts with the same four-note motif as the original, but quickly diverges into a more rhapsodic composition. Hints of the tune are present, but are extracted, shifted, and expanded upon to create a fresh perspective that fits the confines of the marimba.