Choral Concerto

The choral concerto is the sacred a cappella concerto of the Orthodox world, a multi-movement setting of psalm texts for unaccompanied choir that flourished in Russia and Ukraine in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Modelled on the instrumental concerto, it sets the full choir against smaller groups of soloists in alternating blocks, moving between homophonic declamation, imitative counterpoint and brilliant fugal finales. *Dmitry Bortniansky* brought the form to its classical peak in dozens of concertos for the Imperial Chapel, and *Alfred Schnittke* revived it in his "Concerto for Choir" of 1984-85.