St. Martin's Chamber Choir

Program notes - "Music of the Tsars"

A Note from the Artistic Director

When I had determined about a year ago to do a concert of Russian music, I began researching the Russian choral tradition – something with which I had been heretofore wholly unfamiliar – by purchasing literally hundreds of Russian choral scores, and proceeded to play through them all.

At the start, having largely only the music of Rachmaninov in my mind as an example (as well as Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture”) – with its solid, slow-moving and largely non-chromatic harmonies, its contemplative pacing, its very low bass parts, and its peculiarly Russian sense of melancholic resignation – I assumed I would discover the ancient examples of what Rachmaninov and his contemporaries had based their works on. To my surprise, I learned that the “tradition” was actually only about 150 years old, dating to what was called the “Primitivist Movement” of the mid-19th century.

Following the Christianization of Russia in the 9th century A.D., the earliest Russian sacred music conformed closely to the monophonic Greek chants of the Orthodox church, from which the Russian stemmed. There was little development that can be called intrinsically Russian to this music for about 600 years. Gradually, especially through the influence of a once-powerful Poland, Renaissance techniques from the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches seeped into the Russian church (witness tonight’s work by Titov). This accelerated in the late 17th century with the attempts of Tsar Peter I (“the Great”) to westernize Russia into a modern European state. In the 18th century, the German-born Tsarina Catherine II (also “the Great”) even hired exclusively Italian musicians for her court, and Orthodox music conformed to her western tastes (heard tonight in the works by Bortniansky and Cui).

It was not until the mid-19th century, with the rising nationalistic tide following the Napoleonic Wars, that Russian church musicians began striving for an ideal that sounded more Russian – even though there was little, aside from Greek chant, from which to draw. Hence, composers like Glinka, Balakirev, Archangelsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov began employing Ukrainian and Greek chants in their works (exemplified tonight through works by Tolstiakov and Golovanov), as well as other Russian folk-elements, in an effort to “recreate” something “primitive” that had actually never existed. These early attempts resulted in a flowering of what was to become the quintessential Russian style that was given its most mature expression by composers such as Tchaikovsky, Gretchananinov, Rachmaninov, and Kalinnikov in the late-19th and early 20th centuries, which the second half of the program will focus on.

A sticheron is the name for a chant sung in alternation with psalm verses at various places in the Orthodox liturgy. This is one of the most ancient of Russian chants, stemming from the 12th century, and is authentically performed here in procession to begin the concert.

Titov wrote over 200 sacred works, 100 of them in the form of what were called “concertos,” which essentially denoted polyphonic music (the Orthodox define polyphony not so much as a musical texture, as western musicians do, but as a textual one, when the words are not being said at the same time by all the singers). He served as a singer in Tsar Peter I’s “Singing Clerics” in Moscow. Most of his works divide into multiple voices, up to 24; this one is fairly compact with only 8 voices.

The Ukrainian-born Bortniansky studied under Catherine II’s imported Italian court composer Baldassare Galuppi while the latter lived in Moscow, and showed such early promise that, when Galuppi returned home, the Tsarina sent Bortniansky along to complete his studies in Italy. He spent 11 years abroad, writing works in Latin, Italian and German, producing several operas in Venice and Modena, and finally returning to great acclaim to St. Petersburg in 1779, where Catherine immediately appointed him conductor of the Imperial Chapel. When Tsar Paul came to the throne in 1796, Bortniansky was advanced to the top position as Director of the Imperial Chapel. His music is unapologetically western in style, as exemplified by this Cherubic Hymn. Only occasionally, in the movement of one chord to another, or in the characteristic wedding of a certain sonority with a Russian syllable, does one hear a veiled Russian spirit hinted at.

Lithuanian by birth, Cui moved to St. Petersburg when he was 16 to train as an engineer. His musical education consisted of private lessons with the Polish composer Moniuszko. He was a music critic and journalist for the St. Petersburg newspaper for many years, and his music compositions were largely secular, including operas, chamber music, lieder, and a cappella choruses. He was counted among the “Mighty Handful” of pro-Russian composers of the mid-19th century. He did not turn to sacred music until late in life, and composed only five such works, including tonight’s setting of “My Soul Magnifies the Lord.” I include it not only because of its sheer beauty, but to show that much 19th century Russian sacred music continued to be largely Western European in style, despite Cui’s public association with the “Mighty Handful.”

Although Golovanov belongs in the second half of this program as a composer of the mature Russian Orthodox style, I include him here as an example of the way Russian composers began to harmonize the Greek modal chants of the ancient church as one way to begin “recapturing” a more primitive Russian style that never actually existed. The presence of the chant itself, however (usually hidden in the 1st tenor part), serves in this case as the “primitive” element. Golovanov studied before the Russian Revolution at the Moscow Synodal School of Church Singing, where he distinguished himself enough to be appointed assistant conductor of the Synodal Choir, and later graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. His 23 sacred works were all written prior to 1917; after the Revolution he worked primarily as an operatic and symphonic conductor in Moscow.

As with the previous piece, although Tolstiakov belongs chronologically to the second half the program, his harmonization of an ancient chant melody persuaded me to place him in this part of the concert as another example of how Russian composers were grasping at what few ancient elements they could in order to create a “purer” Russian style, even though such a style never existed in Russian sacred music. That they succeeded in creating a distinctive Russian style is apparent; but it was essentially new.

Most people, if they have heard any Russian sacred music, have heard Rachmaninov; and the works they have heard come from his two major sacred cycles, the All-Night Vigil and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Tonight’s work is the only sacred piece by Rachmaninov that is separate from the above two cycles, and was written in 1893, when Rachmaninov was but 20, and remained unpublished during his lifetime. Most people agree that the Russian style as defined in the mid-19th century evolved to its highest maturity with Rachmaninov. This was already evident with this youthful work. While his reputation rests solidly on his secular orchestral works, especially his piano concerti, his sacred works strike me as more private, more introverted, and perhaps more genuinely depicting the Russian-ness of his soul. Placed at the end of the first half, this work serves to represent the culmination of the development of the Russian style, and to whet the listener’s appetite for more in the second half.

One hardly needs say anything biographical about Tchaikovsky, so well known is he among classical music-loving circles. Yet it often brings one up short to learn that the urbane, sophisticated composer of the symphonies, ballets, concerti, operas, overtures, chamber music, etc., also wrote a large amount of sacred choral music. His commitment to the Orthodox church is well known, despite his personal struggles to square his homosexuality with its dogma; and therefore it should not come as a surprise that a substantial amount of his total output falls in this category. Like Rachmaninov, he wrote two complete sacred cycles for the All-Night Vigil and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Unlike Rachmaninov, however, Tchaikovsky wrote a large body of sacred works outside these large cycles, among which are the three beautiful settings of the Cherubic Hymn text that are performed tonight.

There were two Kalinnikovs who were composers, and the two are often confused with each other, especially as they were brothers. Vasily composed symphonies, and is the better known. Victor wrote primarily sacred works – and only 24 of those – and is consequently less famous. His 24 works fit into two of the large sacred cycles set by other composers, yet neither one is a complete cycle (for instance, if someone wrote a Kyrie, Gloria, and Sanctus, but didn’t include a Credo or Agnus Dei, you couldn’t call the three movements that were written a “Mass,” but you might group them together as a set of “Mass movements.” So it is with Kalinnikov’s 24 works). The Russian musicologist Vladimir Morosan, while observing that, like his contemporaries and colleagues at the Moscow Synodal School, Kalinnikov created sacred choral works of “textural richness, timbral variety, and profound spiritual reverence.” He goes on to say that the works of Kalinnikov go beyond the others, and deserve a special place in the repertoire. “In particular,” he writes, “his works are characterized by colorful harmonic writing, coupled with subtlety and delicacy of expressive means.” In my own personal survey of Russian sacred music through the last year, I found that Kalinnikov’s works resonated more profoundly with me than any other, even more than Rachmaninov; and hence, I give them pride of place here at the end of this personal exploration of Russian sacred music.

 
Timothy J. Krueger
September 2009

© 2009 Timothy J. Krueger