A beautiful sacred cycle from the premier Russian choral composer of the late 20th century. Conceived in the years 1988-1992, this cycle was first performed in Moscow in 1992. It comprises various, unconnected liturgical texts-from the Divine Liturgy (1, 2, and 3), from the feast of Christmas (4), and Holy Saturday (6), which the composer is known to have studied over the years. The principle of loosely associating various poetic (in this instance, liturgical-poetic) texts is one of Sviridov's characteristic creative principles.