I first discovered the Russian Patriarchate Choir of Moscow through a series of recordings released on the early music label Opus 111 in the 1990s. It may be surprising to associate a Russian religious choir with early music, but in this case, the label is apt. Friday night’s appearance of this unique ensemble under Cal Performances at Berkeley's First Congregational church was one of the most thrilling choral music events of the fall season.Russian Patriarchate Choir
This 13-voice male monastery choir, under the direction of its founder, Anatoly Gridenko, prides itself on performing native Russian sacred music from the 15th through 18th centuries. This is an indigenous repertory, largely unperformed both in the West and, through historical accidents, in Russia. The problems faced by performers and scholars of early Russian religious music parallel those faced by Western musicians. Like early Gregorian chant, this repertory is written in neumes, music scholars' term for primitive notation. Matters of rhythm, and even pitch, are imprecise, and the earliest versions we can read are in versions copied centuries after the music’s creation.
When 19th-century scholars such as Fyodor Uspinskii first published this repertory, performers of the time either did not know what to do with it or tried to recompose the melodies in Romantic fashion. A genre such as demestvenny polyphony is so far removed from modern functional harmony as to be almost indescribable in Western terms.
This music is astonishingly dissonant, built on a homophonic tonal language of seconds, sevenths, fourths, and fifths — the best sonic comparison would be the music of Paul Hindemith. You could draw a parallel in architecture. The Westernization programs of the 18th century, starting with Peter the Great (1672-1725), renounced the indigenous and Asiatic styles that gave rise to buildings such as the Kremlin, parts of which are contemporaneous with this music.
A Musical Mystery
In the absence of recordings, modern performers have little concept of what early performances sounded like. Scholars conjecture that this music was performed with or without a Byzantine-style ison (drone), with or without polyphony, with or without soloist passages, and with or without the strong fourth and fifth dissonances found in some (but not all) editions. The only thing everyone agrees on is that only men sang the music.
In the absence of better guidance, the Patriarchate Choir often defaulted to styles advocated in the early 20th century, most prominently by the composer Pavel Chesnokov (1877-1944) in his seminal treatise, The Choir and How to Conduct It. In fact, the audience heard some beautiful Chesnokov in the second half of the concert, through one of three unannounced program substitutions, Sovet Prevechnii (Revealing to you).
Muscovite and Novgorodian polyphony of the 16th to 18th century formed the first half of the concert. Most remarkable was the choir’s sense of continuous line. In a preconcert talk, the director referred to this music consisting of not one voice, but several voices, "like a river that divides into several streams and then rejoins." I came to understand what he meant by hearing how the performers constantly pushed the line forward without end, ignoring the foursquare hierarchy of beat and pulse one normally hears in nearly all Western music. Breaths were undetectable as the voices subsumed themselves to the ever-flowing line.
These men have extremely big, colorful voices, but they press down on the sound to create a straighter tone while maintaining a forward buzz and brilliance. The effect is similar to what one hears from professional Russian folksingers who today are often trained in conservatories. Of course, hearing the extraordinarily low basses was alone worth the price of admission.
Only one of the selections, a late-18th-century harmonization of the chant Blazhen Muzh (Blessed is the man) from the Kievan Monastery of the Caves, can be considered to be in repertory. In keeping with their approach to earlier repertories, the Patriarchate Choir offered a much less bel canto rendition of this work than you usually hear, which I found quite convincing.
Hearing Things
After the early chants, the return to Western functional harmony in Dmitri Bortniansky’s choral concerto, Tebe Boge khalim (The Western Te Deum), threw my ears for a loop, and, judging from this work’s shaky start, the Russians’ ears, as well. Being familiar with the work, I found the anonymous TTBB (tenor 1, tenor 2, bass 1, bass 2) arrangement somewhat disconcerting. The low voicing became muddy in First Congregational’s live acoustic.
Bortniansky (1751-1825) was a court composer for Catherine the Great, writing in a classical, almost Mozartean style. In a preconcert interview, the choir’s director mentioned that the Italian composers Catherine imported had difficulties altering Russian singers’ indigenous style. The Berkeley audience may have got a taste of unintended authenticity.
Early 20th-century chant-based religious works by Sergei Rachmaninov, Aleksandr Grechaninov, Chesnokov, and Ruslan Goncharov formed the postintermission section of the concert. (In this context, “traditional Russian chant" refers to Ukrainian melodies and harmonizations, imported during the 18th century, which were highly influenced by the Western styles of nearby Polish Catholics.)
In the opulent cathedrals of the Tsarist courts, popular soloists and composers from the opera world had to contend with the Orthodox prohibition on accompanied singing. The result was a form of "divine theater," with the chorus functioning much as an orchestra, with virtuoso vocal soloists and priests acting as operatic characters. The performances were quite moving, even though the choir was less in its element. The program concluded with anonymous arrangements of rousing Cossack songs.
The spiritual motivation behind the Patriarchate Choir’s efforts to revive early Orthodox singing consistently showed through in this performance, recalling a similarly religiously motivated revival of Elizabethan music in Anglican church choirs in the last century. No one can re-create the exact sound of this repertory, but the Patriarchate Choir’s work provides an important real-world test for the theories of music scholars. This repertory is only beginning to be explored, but it holds much potential to provide inspiration for contemporary composers and to enrich the repertory of modern performing ensembles.
