Bortnianskys sacred choral music has only begun to make a claim on our attention in recent years. In his works, the “Russian Mozart” blended the Italian belcanto style (he spent more than ten years of his life in Venice) with the Orthodox liturgy and historical tradition of the St. Petersburg Imperial Choir to form a personal style which later significantly influenced the choral works of Tchaikovsky as well.

The edition contains the original Russian text in an accurate transliteration, a Ger...