Semyon Panchenko (1867-1937)
PANCHENKO, Semyon Viktorovich (b. 1867, Sudzhansky Uezd, in today’s Kursk district; d. 1937, place of death unknown) — studied composition with A. Liadov; in the 1900s had a private music school in St. Petersburg; concertized as a symphony conductor. Later relinquished conducting and occupied himself with composition; besides sacred works, composed piano works, romances, etc.
Panchenko’s published sacred works number more than 125 (publ. by P. Jurgenson, et al.), including complete cycles of the Divine Liturgy, the All-Night Vigil, the Memorial Service, etc. The greater part of Panchenko’s works comprises arrangements primarily of the so-called Court Chant, written in a rich, chordal style for six to eight voices. Besides these, Panchenko compiled a “Folk Obikhod” — numerous arrangements of the simplest common chants in a harmonization replete with empty fifths and fourths, unison cadences, etc.; these arrangements, however, did not receive widespread use in church-musical practice. Some of Panchenko’s original sacred compositions employ a musical language considered at the time to be modernistic.
