Russian composer, one of the great masters of choral music abroad XVIII and XIX centuries., The successor of the traditions of the School of DS Bortniansky. The most famous work Degtyaryova - Oratory (the first Russian work in this genre) “Minin and Pozharsky or the Liberation of Moscow” (1811), the scale approaching the opera. It was very popular, especially in an environment of patriotic upsurge on the eve of the War of 1812, and performed at the opening of the monument to Minin and Pozharsky in Moscow in 1818. Inspired by the events of World War II, the composer began to write the oratory “The Triumph of Russia, Napoleon or Flight”, but death prevented him to finish it. Degtyarev was also the author of about sixty spiritual concerts for choir, a cappella. Most of his works are not printed. According to contemporaries some of them the composer destroyed.
