The Characteristic Features of Vassily Titov’s Choral Music

Among the Russian composers of the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries a special position is held by the sacred choral works of Vassily Titov (ca. 1650 — ca. 1715), one of the bright representatives of the polyphonic part singing, in which the originality of the Russian Baroque musical culture. The music of Vassily Titov, an outstanding master of choral writing, is diverse in terms of its genres, it comprises nearly two hundred compositions, many of which predominated in the church music repertoire of Russian churches during the course of the 18th century. A study of Vassily Titov’s choral works has made it possible to disclose the characteristic features of the composer’s polyphonic style. The latter include the multi-choral presentation with its bright spatial effects, the antiphonic juxtapositions of large choral masses, the principles of concertizing based on the succession of solo voices and tutti, on the juxtaposition of the chordal-harmonic and the polyphonic exposition, as well as the skillful mastery of imitational counterpoint, up to polyphonic variation. Features of national originality reveal themselves most vividly in the musical thematicism of the compositions, where along with the ornamental design of the intertwining melodic lines and turns of an instrumental type, use is made of intonations of folk songs, cants and church chants. In his musical oeuvres Vassily Titov revised and reevaluated the basic characteristic traits and forms of Western European Baroque music in correspondence with the particularities of Russian musical culture, thereby preserving and enriching the traditions of the Russian national style.