Russian Choral Music

Russian choral music is a polyphonic form of Russian church singing that came into being following the adoption of European polyphonic singing in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.  It replaced a variety of older monophonic chant forms (Znamenny, Kievan, etc), though drawing on elements of these historic forms.  This development led to the flowering of the modern Russian choral tradition led by the Imperial Court Chapel and the Moscow Synodal Choir. Russian choral music is characterized by beautiful four part harmonies, large choirs, and often striking basso profundos.

OVERVIEW

As noted above, the early forms of monophonic chant that developed in Rus after its acceptance of Christianity and the Byzantine Rite (Znamenny, Kievan, Kondkaria, etc.), were eventually supplanted by western-style harmonizations.  This was initially due to the music influence from Poland, and with the accession of Mikhail Romanov to the throne in 1613, westernization was the order of the day in Russian culture, theology itself not escaping from this tendency. Much came from Poland across her borders with the Ukraine. By the end of the 17th century, both the court and the patriarchal singers were performing a repertory that was largely polyphonic, sometimes in many parts. While the negative elements of these developments are easy to see and to emphasize from an Orthodox point of view, it must also be admitted that what resulted was something highly original in that the Russians' and the Ukrainians' attitude to their native languages was not compromised by their usage of western counterpoint: this, added to the creative deployment of elements from folk polyphony, led to a repertoire that does not quite sound like anything else.

The name for this style (written, with few exceptions, in western notation) is simply partesnoe penie, part singing, and its chief representative was Nikolai Diletsky (c.1630-c.1680), Polish- and Lithuanian-trained. He wrote an influential book entitled simply A Musical Grammar, first published in Polish at Vilnius in 1675, which expounds the basis of western music theory (including, interestingly, the earliest known mention of the circle of fifths) and discusses the composition of sacred music according to western models of voice-leading. Parallel with this complex style of writing is the kant, a paraliturgical pious song, melodically simple and usually in three (rarely four) parts. The kant became so widespread owing to its easily memorable character that it began to penetrate into churches and monasteries and influenced liturgical chant: many Znammeny or Kievan melodies were harmonized in parallel thirds with a bass, thereby becoming the basis of what one hears today in many Russian parish churches.

From the 1750s onwards, the Imperial Court began to look more toward Italy for inspiration in cultural matters. During the reign of the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, a large number of artists, architects, sculptors and musicians left Italy for St Petersburg. The list of chapel masters of the Court Choir during the 18th century is a continuous stream of foreigners who wrote for the Court chapel and had a lasting influence on many young Russian composers, including Bortnyansky who became Chapel Master at the Imperial Court, and then Director. His lyrical style, in combination with western counterpoint, made him the outstanding composer of this period. Vlad Morosan observes of him and his contemporaries that their creative orientation and musical vocabulary were almost entirely European, as were the performance techniques mastered by the singers of the Court Chapel.” 

With the death of Bortyansky in 1825, for political as well as cultural reasons, Germany succeeded Italy as the dominant influence. The Imperial Chapel was taken over by Lvov (1798- 1870), who had traveled in Germany and knew Mendelssohn, Schumann and Meyerbeer. His music for the Church is characterized by four-part harmony, in German style, predominating over the melody which is always placed in the top voice. His influence was considerablein what came to be known as the St Petersburg period. In 1879, a famous incident occurred which would have significant consequences for Russian church music. Pyotr Jurgenson, the Moscow music publisher who frequently worked with the Imperial Chapel, published Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom without the authorization of the Court Chapel. Tchaikovsky sought and received authorization from the Senate, and though many have considered the work too "western," it may be considered truly Russian in spirit, and marks the end of the period of German domination and the initiation of the study and recovery of the Russian Church's musical past.

This return to Russia's liturgical and musical heritage was begun by Prince Vladimir Feodorovich Odoievsky (1804-1869), a philosopher, writer, critic and musicologist. He was a founder member of the Russian Musical Society, which would play an extremely important role in Russian musical life at the end of the 19th century. He was a lover of old music books, and of Znammeny chant manuscripts and prints in particular. It would not be until after the lingering effects of the Revolution could be overcome the chilling effects of the Russian Revolution could this work continue.  In recent times a revival has begun in Russia to explore it’s history and tradition of early chant forms, and to incorporate them in to contemporary Russian choral music.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Liturgica.com offers the following additional content on this subject:

1.  Early Orthodox Chant and Music

2. Words and Music in Orthodox Worship (by David Drillock)

3. An Outline History of Russian Sacred Music (by Ivan Moody)

4. Development of Manuscript Notation

The Liturgica.com Web Store offers:

1. Over 100 CDs of Russian Chant and Choral Music both in Church Slavonic and English  Old Roman Chant

2. A wide range of books on the development of liturgical worship

3. A selection of books on chant and its development

4. Books on iconography

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