Sacred Love
As the Saint Nicholas Choir and Schola Cantorum prepare settings in Old Church Slavonic, I have been contemplating the things I love about Russian choral singing.
A fantastic example that will illustrate several qualities at once is a simple work by Georgy Sviridov (1915-1998), a beloved and popular composer during the Soviet era, known for his sumptuous Neo-Romantic harmony inflected with the qualities of Russian Orthodox chant.
The following piece, titled “Sacred Love,” is one of three choruses Sviridov composed to accompany Tolstoy’s historical play Tsar Feodor Ivanovich, set in the 16th century. Though created at a time when Soviet Party ideology ruled out the composition of church music, Sviridov was able to compose texts with sacred overtones as incidental music for the play. Thus, the text itself had contemporary connotations in the Soviet context:
Ты любовь, ты любовь, ты любовь святая, от начала ты гонима, кровью политая
“Sacred love, O sacred love, from the beginning, you have been persecuted, drenched in blood.”
Here, in this rapturous performance by the Intrada Vocal Ensemble from Moscow and conducted by the brilliant Ekaterina Antonenko, we hear several impressive qualities of Russian singing:
Outstanding technical abilities — including breath control for days
Marvelous vowel “color” and unity
Phrasing to die for: just watching the conductor shape the music is moving!
Powerful emotions just below the surface: listen to the swell in the middle of the piece.
A deeply spiritual sense of atmosphere
Conceiving of beauty and sadness as two sides of the same coin
I hope this gives you a hankering to hear more Russian choral music, and don’t forget to tune in to the Saint Philip’s YouTube channel on July 16, when the Saint Nicholas Choir and Schola Cantorum will sing Compline!
Dr Justin Appel, Director of Music