“Carol of the Bells” (also known as the “Ukrainian Bell Carol”) is a choral miniature work originally composed by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych. Throughout the composition, Leontovych used a four note motif as an ostinato which was taken from an ancient pagan Ukrainian New Year’s chant known in Ukrainian as “Shchedryk” [the Generous One].

The conductor of the Ukrainian Republic Capella, Oleksander Koshyts commissioned Ukrainian composer Leontovych to create the song based on traditional Ukrainian folk songs/chants, and the resulting new work for choir, “Shchedryk”, was based on four notes Leontovych found in the Ukrainian anthology.[3]

The original Ukrainian folk story related to the song was associated with the coming New Year, which, in pre-Christian Ukraine, was celebrated with the coming of spring in April. The original Ukrainian title translates to “the generous one”[4] or is perhaps derived from the Ukrainian word for bountiful (shchedryj),[3] and tells a tale of a swallow flying into a household to proclaim the bountiful year that the family will have.[5]

With the introduction of Christianity to Ukraine and the adoption of the Julian calendar, the celebration of the New Year was moved from April to January, and the holiday with which the chant was originally associated became Malanka (Ukrainian: Щедрий вечір, Shchedry vechir), the eve of the Julian New Year (the night of January 13–14 in the Gregorian calendar). The songs sung for this celebration are known as Shchedrivky.[6]

Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych (Ukrainian: Микола Дмитрович Леонтович, pronounced [mɪˈkɔlɐ dmɪˈtrɔʋet͡ʃ ɫeɔnˈtɔʋet͡ʃ] ⓘ; 13 December [O.S. 1 December] 1877 – 23 January 1921) was a Ukrainian composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, and teacher. His music was inspired by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko and the Ukrainian National Music School. Leontovych specialised in a cappella choral music, ranging from original compositions to church music to elaborate arrangements of folk music.

Leontovych was born and raised in Monastyrok in the Podolia province of the Russian Empire (now in Vinnytsia Oblast, Western Ukraine). He was educated as a priest in the Kamianets-Podilskyi Theological Seminary. With the independence of the Ukrainian State in the 1917 revolution, he moved to Kyiv, where he worked at the Kyiv Conservatory and the Mykola Lysenko Institute of Music and Drama. He composed “Shchedryk” in 1914 (premiered in 1916), now known to the English-speaking world as “Carol of the Bells”. He was murdered by a Soviet agent in 1921 and is known as a martyr in the Eastern Orthodox Ukrainian Church, where he is also remembered for his liturgy, the first composed in the vernacular, specifically in the modern Ukrainian language.

Source: Wikipedia