1846–1924 · Russia · Romantic
Alexander Arkhangelsky (1846-1924) was a Russian precentor and composer who led his own choir in St Petersburg for many years. He wrote sacred music for church singing and proposed replacing boys' voices with women's voices in church choirs. He wrote hundreds of sacred choral works and folk-song arrangements.
Alexander Arkhangelsky was born on 23 October 1846 in the village of Staroye Tezikovo in the Narovchat district of Penza Governorate. As a boy, in the 1850s, he sang in the choir of the Pokrovsky Cathedral in Narovchat. In 1870 that same cathedral was where the future writer A. I. Kuprin, also a native of Narovchat district, was baptised; the cathedral building survives to this day and holds the status of a cultural heritage site.
Arkhangelsky continued his education at the Krasnoslobodsk Theological School and then at the Penza Theological Seminary. He had sung in the archbishop's choir from childhood, and from 1862 he led it himself, gaining experience of directing a singing ensemble while still a student, long before it became his profession. Later he taught singing at the seminary himself. This set the pattern for the path he followed all his life: from an ordinary chorister to a precentor who taught others to sing.
After the seminary Arkhangelsky worked as a precentor in Penza and then moved to St Petersburg. There he joined the Singers' Chapel in 1872, passing an examination for the precentor's title, and from 1873 he took charge of several church choirs in the capital, including, between 1889 and 1898, the choir kept by Count Sheremetev. Alongside this conducting work he also taught singing at the Alexander Lyceum.
In 1880 Arkhangelsky formed his own mixed choir in St Petersburg. Its repertoire included Russian choral classics, arrangements of folk melodies and works by contemporary composers, and the ensemble was known for its high standard of performance. It was here that the conductor introduced an innovation unusual for church practice of the time: women's voices took the place of boys' voices. From 1883 the choir performed not only in Russia but abroad, singing sacred music from Russia and the West together with secular pieces and folk-song arrangements. This work stirred wide public interest in Russian song, and Arkhangelsky himself arranged many examples of it for choir.
Arkhangelsky's early pieces were plain settings of church chants that together formed a full yearly cycle of liturgical hymns; later his style grew more complex, enriching the St Petersburg tradition of church music with more elaborate works close in spirit to Western European polyphony. Among his works are two original liturgies, an all-night vigil and about eighty short pieces, including eleven Cherubic Hymns, ten hymns of Mercy of Peace, and sixteen chants sung in place of the communion verses during the service. One piece stands out especially: the sacred concerto I Contemplate the Dreadful Day, dramatic in mood. Besides church music, he wrote secular unaccompanied (a cappella) choruses and arrangements of Russian folk songs. In total the composer wrote more than three hundred sacred works and arrangements of church chants, many of them published as complete liturgical cycles: the Divine Liturgy, the All-Night Vigil and the Memorial Service. This combination of strict church tradition and freer writing became a distinctive feature of his musical handwriting.
In 1902 he founded a mutual-aid society for singers of church choirs in St Petersburg, taught choral singing at various educational institutions and published collections of choral works. In 1908 Arkhangelsky chaired the first congress of conductors in Moscow. In October 1921 St Petersburg, by then renamed Petrograd, solemnly marked the fiftieth anniversary of his musical career, and he was awarded the title of Honoured Artist of the Republic.
Arkhangelsky spent the last two years of his life in Prague, where he led a student choir. He died on 16 November 1924 in a house in the Vinohrady district of Prague; a memorial plaque in Czech and Russian was later placed on the building. He was first buried in the Orthodox section of the Olsany Cemetery in Prague, next to the Church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God. In 1925, at the request of relatives and friends, his remains were moved to Leningrad and reburied at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Arkhangelsky's name is still remembered today. In 2002 the Penza Music School was named after him, but it lost that name when it was reorganised into an arts college; the college regained the name only in 2021. In 2003 the sculptor Alexander Khachaturyan made a memorial plaque-relief of Arkhangelsky; it was placed in Penza, on the building of the Centre for Russian Choral and Vocal Culture. And in 2019 a museum dedicated to Alexander Arkhangelsky opened in Narovchat. Over the past century his name has thus returned to public memory more than once — in institutions' names, memorial plaques and museum halls.
The main part of Arkhangelsky's legacy is sacred choral music: original liturgies, an all-night vigil, chants for particular moments of the service, and sacred concertos for unaccompanied (a cappella) mixed choir. He worked within the St Petersburg tradition of church singing, starting from simple arrangements of traditional chants and later moving to more elaborate works close in spirit to Western European choral polyphony. A notable feature of his style is the use of women's voices instead of boys' voices. In total Arkhangelsky wrote more than three hundred sacred works and arrangements of church chants; many were published as complete liturgical cycles: the Divine Liturgy, the All-Night Vigil and the Memorial Service. Among them are the concerto I Contemplate the Dreadful Day, notable for its high drama, and the cycle of eleven Cherubic Hymns. This range of genres, from strict liturgical cycles to dramatic concertos, makes his legacy interesting material for choirs of different levels. This variety also reflects the composer's own path, from a seminary choir student to the founder of his own choir in the capital.
Besides church music, Arkhangelsky arranged Russian folk songs and wrote secular unaccompanied choruses. Such music is written for voices alone, without instrumental support, and demands a well-blended ensemble, clean intonation and the ability to sustain a long phrase — a good school for any singing group, from a school choir to an amateur adult one. This kind of repertoire was also heard in the concerts Arkhangelsky's choir gave during its foreign tours in the 1880s. This repertoire also suits ensembles that are only just starting to sing unaccompanied.
The site offers a setting of Arkhangelsky's sacred choral work To the Mother of God Let Us Earnestly Hasten for mixed choir (SATB); the difficulty level is Medium. Hymns of this kind, addressed to the Mother of God, belong to the broad group of short sacred pieces that Arkhangelsky wrote for church and concert performance. It is a suitable starting point for getting to know his music for a choir that has already mastered the basics of unaccompanied singing. Those who are only starting to sing unaccompanied sacred music are better off first building clean intonation on the choir's simpler parts.