Evening Bell (song)
Encyclopedia
Ivan Kozlov
Ivan Ivanovich Kozlov was a Russian Romantic poet and translator. As D. S. Mirsky noted, "his poetry appealed to the easily awakened emotions of the sentimental reader rather than to the higher poetic receptivity"....
and Alexander Alyabyev
Alexander Alyabyev
Alexander Aleksandrovich Alyabyev, also rendered as Alabiev or Alabieff was a Russian composer. He wrote seven operas, twenty musical comedies, more than 200 songs, and many other pieces. His most famous work is The Nightingale, a song based on a poem by Anton Delvig. It was composed while...
. The lyrics are adapted from a Russian-themed verse by Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron's memoirs after his death...
.
English original
In 1818 Thomas Moore published his first collection of National Airs, a collection of songs which included his verses and musical scores by John StevensonJohn Stevenson (composer)
Sir John Andrew Stevenson was an Irish composer of classical music. He is best known for his publications of Irish Melodies with poet Thomas Moore...
. The title of one verse from the Russian airs was Those Evening Bells with the subtitle Air: The bells of St.Petersburg. It starts with:
How many a tale their music tells,
Of youth, and home, and those sweet time,
When last I heard their soothing chime.
..
Moore mentioned that the verse was based on a Russian original, but all attempts to find the original failed. One hypothesis put forward in 1885 traced the source of the song to George the Hagiorite
George the Hagiorite
George the Hagiorite – Giorgi Mt'ats'mindeli or Giorgi At'oneli – , was a Georgian monk, religious writer, and translator, who spearheaded the activities of Georgian monastic communities in the Byzantine Empire...
, an Orthodox monk and writer of the eleventh century from the Iviron monastery
Iviron monastery
Holy Monastery of Iviron is an Eastern Orthodox monastery at the monastic state of Mount Athos in Greece...
on Mount Athos
Mount Athos
Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in Macedonia, Greece. A World Heritage Site, it is home to 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and forms a self-governed monastic state within the sovereignty of the Hellenic Republic. Spiritually, Mount Athos comes under the direct jurisdiction of the...
). Soviet researchers tried to prove the link, but found no traces of such a song. The most likely conclusion is that the verse is Thomas Moore's original creation loosely based on Russian-related themes.
The verse was quite well known in the English-speaking world, e.g., it was satirised by Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...
(Those Evening Bells, those Evening Bells, How many a tale their music tells, Of Yorkshire cakes and crumpets prime, And letters only just in time!. It was listed in the dictionary of familiar quotations from 1919.
Kozlov's translation
Kozlov was a Russian poet in his own right, but also a prolific translator of contemporary English poetry (translating Byron, Charles WolfeCharles Wolfe (poet)
Charles Wolfe was an Irish poet, chiefly remembered for his "exquisite elegy", The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna-Family:...
and Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron's memoirs after his death...
). His Russian text published in 1828 is more like an adaptation of the English original, as Kozlov used six-line stanzas instead of quatrains of the original, while being still faithful to the general mood and the rhythmic structure of the source (iambic tetrameter
Iambic tetrameter
Iambic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of four iambic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that there are four feet in the line; iambic tetrameter is a line comprising four iambs...
). His adaptation is credited with greater elaboration of the context, grounding the abstractness of the original with specific examples.
| Thomas Moore | Ivan Kozlov | Literal back translation |
|---|---|---|
(Air: The bells of St.Petersburg) |
|
|
How many a tale their music tells, Of youth, and home, and those sweet time, When last I heard their soothing chime. ... |
Как много дум наводит он О юных днях в краю родном, Где я любил, где отчий дом, И как я, с ним навек простясь, Там слушал звон в последний раз! ... |
How many a thought it inspires. Of youth days in my native land, Where I loved, where my father's house is. And also of the moment when leaving it forever, I was hearing the bell there for the last time! ... |
When Kozlov published this verse, the original text was not mentioned. Combined with the fact that Moore's text claimed to be based on a Russian original, this brought some erroneous attributions (as early as in 1831) that Moore's verse is a translation of Kozlov's.
Song
Soon after publication of the Russian translation, it was made into a song by Alexander AlyabyevAlexander Alyabyev
Alexander Aleksandrovich Alyabyev, also rendered as Alabiev or Alabieff was a Russian composer. He wrote seven operas, twenty musical comedies, more than 200 songs, and many other pieces. His most famous work is The Nightingale, a song based on a poem by Anton Delvig. It was composed while...
, also in 1828. This music became immensely popular and resulted in variations on the same theme, as well as in completely different songs based on the same translation.
The English original itself was published with music composed by John Stevenson. It also resulted in several other songs::
- Harry Hill, (SSASSA-Commercial/ government enterprises:* SSA Global Technologies* SSA Graphics* Social Security Administration* Special Services Area-Computing and data analysis:* Software Security Assurance* Serial Storage Architecture* Singular Spectrum Analysis...
, a cappella) - Charles Edward Ives (in 1907)
- Harvey Worthington LoomisHarvey Worthington LoomisHarvey Worthington Loomis was an American composer. He is remembered today for his associations with the Indianist movement and the Wa-Wan Press....
(in 1918, SSA, a cappella) - Henry Ketten (1848–1883)
Other translations
There are two translations of the song into German (by Caroline Leonhardt Pierson and Henry Hugo PiersonHenry Hugo Pierson
Henry Hugh Pearson was an English composer resident from 1845 in Germany. He is also known as Edgar Mansfeld and, when living in Germany, as Heinrich Hugo Pierson. He had success in his adopted country with his operas and songs but little in his own, and his music is now rarely performed...
, O Abendglocken, Abendhall, 1845), as well as into Polish (by Stanisław Moniuszko
Stanisław Moniuszko
Stanisław Moniuszko was a Polish composer, conductor and teacher. His output includes many songs and operas, and his musical style is filled with patriotic folk themes of the peoples of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...
).
Sergei Taneyev
Sergei Taneyev
Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev , was a Russian composer, pianist, teacher of composition, music theorist and author.-Life:...
and Antoni Grabowski
Antoni Grabowski
Antoni Grabowski was a Polish chemical engineer, and an activist of the early Esperanto movement...
translated Moore's original verse into Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
under the title Sonoriloj de vesper (Evening bells).
External links
Two different versions of the song performed by Nicolai GeddaNicolai Gedda
Nicolai Gedda is a Swedish operatic tenor. Having made some two hundred recordings, Gedda is said to be the most widely recorded tenor in history...
and Ivan Rebroff
Ivan Rebroff
Ivan Rebroff was a German singer, allegedly of Russian ancestry, with an extraordinary vocal range of four and a half octaves, ranging from the soprano to impressive bass registers....
: