"If this isn’t nice, what is?"

"<Shchedryk> was arranged by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych at the beginning of the 20th century. The song is based on the traditional Ukrainian folk chant welcoming the New Year (“shchedrivka”). In 1921, the Ukrainian National Chorus sung the song in the United States to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall. Later, Peter J. Wilhousky rearranged the melody for orchestra and wrote the new lyrics in English thus creating “Carol of the Bells”. The original “Shchedryk” by Leontovych was intended to be sung a cappella by mixed four-voice choir."

credits:
https://youtu.be/GqeJ38DThVc

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/the-ironic-intensity-of-carol-of-the-bells/420519/

Might “Carol of the Bells” be the most ironic holiday song there is? It purports to be a song about, well, bells, but its most popular versions instead feature human voices or electric guitars. Its lyrics describe silver bells intoning holiday cheer into every home, yet its melody suggests a force both relentless and mirthless. If you want a genuinely merry tune about the sound of ringing signaling the arrival of Christmas, go with “Silver Bells.” If, on the other hand, you’re trying to find fitting music for the scene where Tiny Tim dies of sickness and malnourishment while Scrooge counts his fortune,“Carol of the Bells” is perfect, right down to the low, funereal “Bohm” that concludes most choral versions of the song.

Even without words, “Carol of the Bells” is laden with irony. The epic, Wagnerian Trans-Siberian Orchestra adaptation that’s packed arenas for the last decade takes as its subject a cellist playing Christmas carols in the town square of a devastated Sarajevo. “It was just such a powerful image,” said the TSO founder Paul O’Neill, “a white-haired man silhouetted against the cannon fire, playing timeless melodies to both sides of the conflict amid the rubble and devastation of the city he loves.” (The TSO version pairs the carol with “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” another song that draws inspiration from the dark and haunting elements of the Christmas story, as my colleague Emma Green has written.)

The song that would become “Carol of the Bells” began its life as a Ukrainian folk chant,“Shchedryk,” arranged into a choral composition in the early 20th century by the composer Mykola Leontovych. In the chant, which was originally sung to welcome spring, a swallow flies into a man’s house and tweets about imminent good fortune. (This would at least somewhat explain the frantic, haunting melody, inspired by a swallow’s song.) When another composer, Peter Wilhousky, heard a choir perform “Shchedryk,” he was supposedly reminded of ringing bells, and wrote the English lyrics to “Carol of the Bells” as a result. And here we are.

Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells)

What Was That

omul gol / ăsta e cel mai frumos cadou

Tujurlamur

Versailles

Jolene

for my father

"But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure? On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains." - Cicero

Dismal

Music by Cristina Stanciu, Radu Velicu & Sebastian Lala.

Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells)

Ap. 40

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