...GOT LEGS:

A group of men and women in traditional embroidered dress took the stage at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 5, 1922, for a performance that the New York Tribune dubbed "a marvel of technical skill." The New York Times called the music they made "simply spontaneous in origin and artistically harmonized." The New York Herald described the costume-clad singers as expressing "a profound unanimity of feeling that aroused genuine emotion among the listeners." The audience that cheered for encores and threw flowers on the stage didn't know it at the time, but they had just heard what would eventually become one of the world's most beloved and recognized Christmas songs: "Carol of the Bells."

Onstage was the Ukrainian National Chorus conducted by Alexander Koshetz. At the end of Part 1 of the program at Carnegie Hall, they performed composer Mykola Leontovych's arrangement of a traditional Ukrainian song the playbill called "Shtshedryk." The audience likely also did not know that just over a year before the New York premiere, Leontovych had been assassinated by the Cheka--the Bolshevik secret police.

The song's journey onto the world's stage and its transformation into an American Christmas classic is a tale of musical inspiration, nationalism, and political violence. At its center is a beautiful, haunting melody that has captivated audiences for over a hundred years and spawned countless versions.

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