Despite the best efforts of Soviet commissars to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church and its music, at least one composer, Georgy Sviridov (1915-1998) succeeded in incorporating the best aspects of the early-20th-century “Russian choral school” and building upon them in his extraordinary choral legacy. Prevented from writing sacred music by the prevailing ideology, he composed his sacred works as incidental music for Alexei Tolstoy's historical play, Tsar Feodor Ioannovich, set in the 16th century. In Sviridov's masterful hands, sacred texts and medieval chant motifs are clothed in a sonorous attire that is even more magnificent than that of his predecessors. Much of the choral world has yet to discover the marvelous (mostly choral) output of this major Russian master of the latter half of the 20th century
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