The verses are penitential, tearful and moving, so that they call the soul to repentance" — this title in chant manuscripts relates to particular works. First of all, these texts appeared in chant books at the end of the fifteenth century. They were not connected to the Church"s Ordo and liturgical practice. They are an ancient layer of Russian para-liturgical religious poetry. The purpose of the verses was to lead the singers and listeners to a pure repentance of sins, once committed or imagined, that would benefit the soul.

The freedom of melody, its beauty and divine inspiration, the lofty sensitivity of its poetry, and the power of all these component parts were so great that the penitential verses survived the medieval tradition by receiving embodiment at the end of the seventeenth century in the new genres of para-liturgical lyric poetry of psalms and religious verses, and in the twentieth century — in the great artistic works of the Russian composers Georgy Sviridov, Valery Gavrilin and Vladimir Martynov.

A.N. Kruchinina, Professor of the St. Petersburg Conservatoire