35 Sacred Choral Concertos

Dmitry Bortniansky is credited with developing the genre of the sacred choral concerto - the musical centerpiece of the Orthodox "Divine Liturgy"- to its highest level. His thirty-five choral concertos for four voices were first published as a set in the early nineteenth century. Although no autograph manuscript of these psalm settings exists, there are several authoritative early sources that can be found in Austrian, British, and Russian archives. The present edition offers an alternative to the edition produced by Peter Tchaikovsky and his publisher Peter Jurgenson in 1882, which has long been the standard source for performing and studying Bortniansky's music. The editor of this edition has paid particular attention to rendering the exact dynamics, as they were conceived by the composer. The text underlay is presented both in transliteration, as well as in the Cyrillic alphabet. German and English translations of the text (non-singing text) have also been included in the edition. Separate editions of each piece are also available.