Chorale’s winter project is Alexander Kastalsky’s Memory Eternal to the Fallen Heroes (Selected Hymns from the Requiem), which was completed and published in Moscow in 1917. Kastalsky (1856-1926) was the director of the Moscow Synodical School of Church Singing, and a leader of the new, Neo-Russian stylistic movement in Russian Orthodox choral church composition.
Kastalsky mentored a group of younger composers which included Sergei Rachmaninoff, Viktor Kalinnikov, Alexander Gretchaninoff, and Pavel Chesnokov. This neo-Russian movement, which also expressed itself in Russian instrumental music beginning in the late nineteenth century, sought to eliminate western European influence from the church’s music, and to replace it with melodic and harmonic materials from older, ethnically Slavic sources. From a choral music perspective, this movement was one of the most exciting things that happened in our field in the twentieth century. The resulting music is passionate, exciting to sing, beautiful and unusual. Kastalsky’s music in particular is strikingly original and daring in its use of ancient chant materials, and served as a model for Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, which is the acknowledged masterpiece of the genre. The movement came to an abrupt halt with the Communist revolution and takeover beginning in 1918. Composition and performance of church music were forbidden. Kastalsky, already an older man, devoted the rest of his career to studying folksongs and composing music based upon them; most of his younger colleagues left Russia, and were unable to continue in the same creative, energetic vein, separated from their church and their culture.
In response to the events of World War I, Kastalsky decided to compose, in this new style, a large-scale requiem, a “fraternal service of remembrance for soldiers who have fallen for the common cause.” He began work in the summer of 1914, intending to combine elements of the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass, its Anglican counterpart, and the Russian Orthodox Memorial Service (Panihida). By the end of 1915, he had twelve movements sketched out for chorus and orchestra. But work stalled, for a number of reasons, and ultimately the final, seventeen-movement concert version of his work was not performed.
Undaunted, Kastalsky created an a cappella version which included eleven of the movements, suitable for concert performance and for liturgical use in Orthodox churches. This version includes petitions for a bass deacon, but it is clear Kastalsky did not envision including these petitions in concert performance. Some productions today do include the deacon, singing these petitions; this makes for a longer, more complete concert experience. Chorale’s performance will follow Kastalsky’s instructions and fill out the concert with three related motets composed by Kastalsky’s followers.
This unaccompanied version was not performed in Russia at the time of its composition, due to the shutdown of church music and related activities. In 1996, a version of the work for male voices (not arranged by the composer) was performed by the Men’s Choir of the Moscow Choral Academy. A year later, in 1997, Kastalsky’s full SATB work was finally premiered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the Russian Chamber Chorus, an amateur American choir. The score from which we are working, prepared and published by Music Russica, became available only in 2014, and the work is only gradually entering the repertoire of American choirs. We are excited to be working on it, and eager to present it to you in concert, March 26-27, in Hyde Park and in Lincoln Park. So reserve one of those dates!