SHERIDAN COLLEGE SYMPHONY BAND - Salvation Is Created (Tschesnokov/Erickson)

Описание: The Sheridan College Symphony Band
In CONCERT!
Whitney Center for the Arts
Thursday, 29 March 2018
Dr. Eric Richards, Music Director

Salvation Is Created (A Chorale Prelude) is a powerful work for wind band by Frank Erickson based on a hymn by Pavel Tschesnokov (1877-1944). A renowned Russian composer of sacred choral music, Tschesnokov was educated at the Moscow Conservatory and eventually founded the choral conducting program there. He was also the last choirmaster at the original Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. His career took an unexpected turn after the 1917 Russian Revolution led to the creation of the Soviet Union, which forbid all forms of religious art. While he sustained himself writing secular choral music and directing secular choirs for several more years, the destruction of the Cathedral in 1933 (by order of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin) effectively shut down his creative output.

Salvation Is Created was conceived as a six-voice choral work in 1912. It is an arrangement of a Kievan chant, originally set in Church Slavonic, a Slavic liturgical language still in use in some Orthodox denominations. The form is very simple, consisting of two nearly identical verses that differ only in their final cadences. The text is as follows:

Salvation is made in the midst of the earth, O God. Alleluia.

The “made” in the English translation becomes “created” in a more poetic interpretation, hence the English title. Despite the wide publication of Salvation Is Created in both Russian and English during Tschesnokov’s lifetime, he never heard it performed live.
(Program Note by Andy Pease @ Wind Band Literature.com)