Berlioz set out for St. Petersburg on February 14, 1847, swaddled in a greatcoat borrowed from Balzac. When the railway ran out in Berlin, he continued by stagecoach to finish the last four days of his journey through the cruel Russian winter by sled. Immediately upon his arrival he was taken to the palace of Count Michael Wielhorsky, where arrangements for his initial concerts were made. After an arduous two weeks of travel, he was, suddenly and effortlessly, in the swim, socially and artistically.

At the intermission of his first concert on March 15, he was presented by Count Wielhorsky to the Czarina Alexandra, formerly Princess Louise Charlotte of Prussia. And by invitation of the Czarina and her daughter, Grand Duchess Maria, on May 6 he heard mass in the Imperial Chapel, commanded for himself alone. The music by Dmitry Bortnyansky (1751 - 1825), master and reformer of the Imperial Chapel under Catherine the Great, very likely contributed less to the experience than did its performance. One can hardly overestimate the impact of the 80 exquisitely accomplished choristers in costume—whom Berlioz called "the best choir in the world"—weaving an intricate web of sound around the Russian Orthodox liturgy. Then, as now, the Russian basso profondo, reaching notes below the staff, was unique. And complemented by superbly trained boy sopranos and altos, the effect could only have been overwhelming—even, or especially, to the connoisseur of massed choral singing that Berlioz was. To his sister Adèle he wrote the following day that he is still nervous and trembling from the "celestial choir," and that "infinity opens up before the listener at the sound of their strange, sublime harmonies."

Something of this hovers over portions of the great Te Deum, composed the following year. Berlioz returned to Paris with several of Bortnyansky's works, to two of which he affixed Latin words. For a so-called Chant des chérubins he devised a text of his own ("Adoremus Dei...."), while for the other he replaced the words of the Orthodox liturgy with the Pater noster, or Lord's Prayer. The latter was first performed on January 28, 1851. Its serene declarations unfold with hardly a shadow upon their straightforward hymnody.

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