Style
Titov wrote more than 200 compositions, all of them vocal music. They include complete settings of Divine Services (Sluzhby Bozhie, Службы Божие) and a psalter (by Simeon Polotsky), as well as numerous vocal concertos for feast days. His works range from short, three-voice pieces to large-scale compositions for 12- and 24-voice choirs. Titov was one of the most important followers of Nikolay Diletsky's Idea grammatiki musikiiskoi (1679), an influential treatise on composition. Znamenny Chant was another important influence on Titov's work: he even wrote a Service setting based entirely on the chant.
In Titov's music the text is the most important element, as it defines both the overall form and the shape of the melodic lines, sometimes resulting in accomplished word-painting. The musical language is largely tonal; melodic lines are treated individually in horizontal manner, with many motivic ornaments. Titov's textures in his large-scale works suggest that these pieces were meant not to separate the choirs in alteration, but to unite them, so there is no direct connection to the Venetian antiphonal style of the Western Baroque. A characteristic feature is the so-called variantnost (вариантность), the linking of melodic motifs by continuous subtle alterations which is also an important element in Russian chant and folk polyphonic traditions.
The prayer Mnogaya leta (Многая лета), or Bol'shoe mnogoletie (Большое многолетие) proved to be the most enduring of Titov's compositions, possibly because its polyphony was more simple and therefore in line with the ideals of Classical music era. It was sung in Russian churches up to the October Revolution.
Read more about this topic: Vasily Polikarpovich Titov
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