Chesnokov, Tebe Poem

Many readers of this site will recognize his anthem “Salvation Is Created” (Spaseniye Sodelal), featured way back in Friday Performance Pick 8 Pavel Grigorievich Chesnokov (1877-1944). We sang it in youth choir when I was growing up, although I did not grasp the power of this genre until I encountered Rachmaninov’s All Night Vigil in college and began to dig deeper.

Chesnokov composed more than 400 choral works but was known during his lifetime primarily as a choral conductor rather than a composer. He held some of the most important posts in Russia and established the choral conducting program at the Moscow Conservatory. Despite his strong commitment to Orthodoxy, the Soviets continued to celebrate him as a conductor after the 1917 Revolution.

He ceased composing altogether after Stalin’s 1931 destruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior where Chesnokov had served as its last choirmaster before the Revolution. We recounted that remarkable story in Friday Performance Pick 8, and I won’t retell it in any detail here. If you want more, check out this video. However, on my first visit to Moscow in 1994, I made a point of visiting the Moscow swimming pool (just to look at where the Cathedral once stood) located a few blocks from the Kremlin. It had been made into a swimming pool after all efforts to replace it with a monument to communism had failed. God is not mocked. Carol and I subsequently filmed some footage for our Early Sacred Music course at the faithfully reconstructed Cathedral on that very site.

Tebe Poem translates as “We Sing to Thee.”