Nikolai Potulov (1810-1873)
POTULOV, Nikolai Mikhailovich (b. 1810, Potulovka, in today’s Mokshansk region of the Penza district; d. 18 [30] May 1873, Moscow) — did not receive a specialized musical education, but acquired great practical familiarity with church chants at the school of the Synodal Choir. Belonged to a circle of early Russian researchers studying church singing, which included V. F. Odoyevsky and Archpriest D. V. Razumovsky, and together with them explored various approaches to harmonizing unison chants.
Potulov compiled four collections of harmonizations (publ. 1876 — 1898), in which the chants are supplied mechanically with the so-called “strict style” of harmony, as developed by Western theoreticians, comprising primarily diatonic triads. Despite laudatory reviews from Odoyevsky and Razumovsky, Potulov’s arrangements did become widespread in church-musical practice, and his theoretical positions found only a few adherents among Russian composers of church music.
