FEB 20, singable satire: "CONSTANTINOPOLIS" (the seer of Byzantion)

 PARODY SONG-LYRICS

ORIGINAL SONG: "Moscow Nights"(Подмосковные вечера,  Podmoskovnie vechera), Chad Mitchell Trio, 1963. You can listen to the well-known Trio's version on YouTube here, or a version with English translation here.
The original was created as "Leningrad Nights" by composer Solovyov-Sedoi and poet Matusovsky in 1955, but changed at the request of the Ministry of Culture for use in a documentary about a national athletic competition. The tune was subsequently popularized in the West, in the middle of the Cold War era, by Van Cliburn in 1958, and recorded with commercial success by Kenny Ball and the Jazzmen, and the Chad Mitchell Trio in the early 60s. 

PARODY COMPOSED: Dr. G.H. and Giorgio Coniglio (registered pseudonym) , August 2018. This post deals with Graeco-Roman history during the Byzantine period, and was in part inspired by trips to Turkey and Greece, as well as by the song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", a swing-era hit with a very catchy tune whose lyrics are a bit truncated re history.

UKULELE and GUITAR-FRIENDLY LINK: Our whole series of songs can be found in a friendly format for ukulele (and guitar)-players on our sister blog "SILLY SONGS and SATIRE" with chord-charts for both the parody and original song, as well as helpful performing suggestions. 

To find ukulele chord-charts to help you accompany "Constantinopolis" on your favorite instrument, click HERE.

CONSTANTINOPOLIS

(to the tune of "Moscow Nights")


Said Byzántion’s seer,* “Constantine will found,

Nova Roma, his new cosmopolis.

They’ll construct right here;  

Then we Greeks will cheer

Rome’s second home: Constanti-no-po-lis.” 

“In Rome’s legions march with a martial sound,

They’ll build Fourth Century’s eastern cosmopolis --

Grand Sophia’s dome,

And a huge Hippodrome

Rome’s second home: Constanti-no-po-lis.”

“Who’ll unite this Empire too vast to rule?

Few the Caesars who exert such might.

Year Three-Ninety-Five (395 A.D.),

Things take a permanent dive --

East/West will split; West drops out of sight.

“In clean-shaven West, ‘barbarians’ storm the gates,

Middle Ages will settle there to stay.

Vandals, Lombards, Goths –

Old stomping grounds get lost,

Down East here, ‘Roman’ power’ll hold sway.”

“Who will dogma craft for new Christian creed?

Peter’s primacy;  Roman popes’ll.

We’ll counter Holy See

With Eastern Orthodoxy,

Here in Byzantine Constan-ti-nople.”

“Vicious wars with neighbours” quoth our sooth-saying seer,

Peering in his Prophet-Kit prism,   

“Charlemagne and Popes

Will undermine our hopes,

And result in an East-West Schism.”

“Things take a bad turn with the Fourth Crusade,

Frankish knights, their mission quite hopeless --   

Retake Holy Lands?

But no! They’ll change their plans,

Seize and ‘Latinize’ Constantinopolis.”

 “Fifty years to rid the place of Latin louts

Then two centuries, invasions we’ll stop. All this

Has an end, it’s clear.”

States our seer, with tear,

"When Turks topple Constantinopolis.”

Then we took our seer out for lunch that day

To a small café by the Bosporus.

Name of the café

Where we ate that day,

Was ‘Istanbul (Not Constantinopolis)’.

*  the prediction was made by the Seer early in the fourth century A.D.

Byzántion (Greek), later known as Byzantium (Latin) was at that time a moderate-sized Greek colony-city on the Bosporus. It was chosen by the Roman Emperor Constantine to become the eastern capital of his empire.

As capital of the Roman Empire (also called Romania), the grand city was known as Constantinopolis, or Konstantinoupolis, for most of its history, i.e. until 1453 A.D. (later as Istanbul by the Turks). The term 'Byzantine Empire' has only been in use by Western historians since that time.