Choral concerto

[1] Choral concertos are short compositions for unaccompanied voices, typically containing multiple and distinct sections, with occasional soloistic interludes.

[5] The sacred chants and the polyphony (multi-part singing) found in much folk and secular music were difficult to reconcile.

In the long eighteenth century,[1] Orthodox church music in the Russian Empire underwent a period of Westernisation; the near-ubiquity of Italian music contributed to this,[7] as did the transmission of polyphonic singing from Catholic Poland and Lithuania to Orthodox Christians and Byzantine Catholics in Ukraine and Russia.

The eighteenth century saw the adoption of folk tunes into so-called "high genres", such as symphonies, cantatas, oratorios and opera seria.

However, the desire to create a high "para-liturgical" genre, comparable with Western European masses, requiems and passions, remained unfulfilled.

Blending popular spiritual songs with elements from Western Classical music, polyphony became a unique form with "no substitute or alternative".

[8] While it evolved in Russia, due to the presence of Italian as well as Italian-trained court composers, polyphony and the choral concerto have also been called "entirely Western... at odds with the character of previous Russian music".