Georgy Sviridov

Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov was a Soviet and Russian neoromantic composer. He is most widely known for his choral music, strongly influenced by the traditional chant of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as his orchestral works which often celebrate elements of Russian culture. Sviridov employed, in his choral music especially, rich and dense harmonic textures, embracing a romantic-era tonality; his works would come to incorporate not only sacred elements of Russian church music, including vocal work for the basso profundo, but also display the influence of Eastern European folk music, 19th-century European romantic composers, as well as neoromantic contemporaries outside of Russia. He wrote musical settings of Russian Romantic-era poetry by poets such as Lermontov, Tyutchev and Blok. Sviridov enjoyed critical acclaim for much of his career in the USSR.