A concert of songs dedicated to March 3rd, Bulgaria’s National Day

published on 3/2/12 2:20 PM

Photo: BGNES

A concert of songs dedicated to March 3rd, Bulgaria’s National Day

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We offer you a concert of songs dedicated to March 3rd, Bulgaria’s National Day. It is an occasion to remember the exploits of all the men and women who fought for this country’s Liberation. We bring to memory the tunes born from the events that preceded this great holiday. We usually refer to them as “songs that created history”. They also carry like torches through the centuries the sign of the great shifts that marked the period known as Bulgaria’s National Revival (18th-19th c.).

The song you just heard was written some time around 1842. It became particularly popular in the mid-1870s, during the preparation of the April Uprising of 1876. The lyrics are by Dobri Chintulov, a Bulgarian enlightener, teacher and a militant for the independence of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Scholars claim that he wrote the music and the lyrics simultaneously. Listen to another famous song composed by him, which became the emblem of the April Uprising of 1876.

Heavily defeated the Uprising drew the attention of the civilized world to the plight of the Bulgarian people. In its aftermath dozens of foreigners, such as American journalist Januarius MacGahan, who arrived in Bulgaria immediately after the crash of the Uprising in 1876, wrote about the atrocities of the Turks, and the suffering of the Bulgarians. He was on a mission for the London’s Daily News, and sent back to Britain correspondences about the Bulgarian villages burnt to ashes and the thousands of people massacred. But he also tried to learn more about the livelihood of the Bulgarians and their ideals. “I think, he wrote, that people in England, and in Europe, in general, have a totally wrong idea of the Bulgarians. I was surprised, and I believe the great many of my readers will also be, to find out that there was no Bulgarian village that did not have its own school. These schools are kept by a voluntary tax that the Bulgarians have imposed on themselves. The education there is free of charge, and everyone, the rich and the poor alike take advantage. There are no illiterate kids in Bulgaria, the percentage of literacy of the population is comparable to that in France and Britain…”

The school of the Bulgarian National Revival Period was also a cradle for revolutionary ideas. The classrooms were the place where through such songs, as the one you just heard, the ideals for national identity were echoed.
But there are a great many folk songs dedicated to Bulgaria’s Liberation. In this way people expressed their awe and respect for the memory of those who died for their freedom and interpreted the historical events in their own way. One such song recreates the hope of the oppressed nation in the power of Russia and its czar Alexander II.

The next one, describing the outbreak of the April Uprising, is also a folk song.

Listen now to a religious chant that used to be performed during the solemn services in the first years after the Liberation from Ottoman domination in 1878. Recently the Yulangelo chamber choir revived this chant and included it in its repertoire.

MUSIC 7
On March 3, 1878 liberated Bulgaria was given a chance to make its first steps as a sovereign state. The foundations were laid for internal governance and diplomacy. Conditions were created for the development of education, culture and the arts. The first music institutions appeared which brought up many gifted Bulgarians. We wind up this concert of songs dedicated to March 3rd. Bulgaria’s National Day with a Bulgarian Dance composed by Pancho Vladigerov, performed by violinists Angel Stankov and Yosif Radionov, and pianist Teodora Nestorova.

English version by Radostin Zhelev

По публикацията работи: Albena Bezovska

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A concert of songs dedicated to March 3rd, Bulgaria’s National Day

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