Biography
Mussorgsky has been described as ‘Russia’s most individual and human musical genius’, and it is a tragedy that his life should have been cut so short by alcoholism at the relatively young age of forty-two.
Mussorgsky studied the piano from the age of five and showed considerable talent.
Like many of the now famous composers he gave a concert as a youngster that signalled the extraordinary talent that he possessed, but although everyone around him was aware of his gift Mussorgsky chose to ignore it, disliking the idea of the hard work and discipline that would be required to bring it to fruition.
The family moved away to St Petersburg when Mussorgsky was just ten years old.
He was sent to the Military Academy and, although he showed a serious interest in early Russian church music, it seems that he was unable to concentrate on anything very much other than demolishing his liver by frequent bouts of excessive drinking.
During this time at the Academy Mussorgsky met one of the most famous composers in Russia at the time, Borodin, who over a period of a few months introduced him to a number of the other celebrated composers of the day including Cui, Balakirev and Dargomizhky.
Keeping such illustrious musical company obviously played an important part in inspiring Mussorgsky to write himself.
His early efforts were not particularly good and his first two piano sonatas and a symphony have either been lost or were abandoned almost immediately.
However, after a couple of years Mussorgsky realised a life in the army was quite definitely not for him and he became profoundly interested in the arts – mainly music and literature.
He became increasingly interested in composition but started to find it difficult to deal with the problems of real life.
He apparently developed a bizarre sense of humour largely based on self-mockery and eventually found solace only in drinking alcohol.
The situation worsened when the Tsar Alexander l liberated the serfs and the Mussorgsky family became impoverished.
Modeste Mussorgsky had to take a job as a government clerk, and depression caused his first serious collapse at the hands of alcoholism.
He was living in a commune with five other artistic young men but had to leave because of his ill health and later moved in with his brother, who was tremendously supportive and encouraged his composing career.
Mussorgsky wrote some wonderful songs during this period and completed his opera based on Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov.
The first drafts of the opera were not very well received and Mussorgsky reworked it to the point where it is now a much respected full-length opera that is frequently performed all around the world.
He had also struck up a friendship with another composer, Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom he later shared a flat and who also made some revisions to Boris Godunov, helping it achieve the popularity it deserves.
Mussorgsky’s career from then on was a mixture of ups and downs, the ups being good short bursts of creative work and the downs dreadful binges of drinking, losing jobs and being unable to complete his work through the effects of the drink.
He died following an epileptic fit and a few bouts of raging madness in the military hospital at St Petersburg on 28 March 1881.
Much of Mussorgsky’s music is worth exploring and, in addition to the famous Pictures at an Exhibition (based on the drawings of a friend of his) and the Night on a Bare Mountain, he wrote some excellent songs which now rank alongside those of Schubert, Schumann and Wolf.
Many people found his style of orchestration rather austere and a number of composers since have reorchestrated his works with varying degrees of success.
His close friend Rimsky-Korsakov has, of course, revamped the opera Boris Godunov and the famous Night on a Bare Mountain, whilst Ravel has splendidly orchestrated Pictures at an Exhibition.
One other very different version of this piece is that by the seventies pop group Emerson, Lake and Palmer, who made the music accessible to a much wider audience than before.
Night on the Bare Mountain
1867, Orchestral
In November 1861 Mussorgsky wrote to a friend, saying:
‘I have received an extremely interesting commission which I must prepare for next summer. It is this: a whole act to take place on Bare Mountain . . . a witches’ Sabbath, separate episodes of sorcerers, a solemn march for all this nastiness, a finale – the glorification of the Sabbath in which Mengden [the author] introduces the commander [the devil] of the whole festival on Bare Mountain. . . . it may turn out to be a very good thing.’
The Bare Mountain to which Mussorgsky referred is actually called Mount Triglav, which is near Kiev, and is well known in Russian legend for its witches’ Sabbath is held there every year on St John’s Night (June 23–4), being a festival of evil spirits, sorcerers and the suchlike.
Six years later, however, Mussorgsky had barely started his symphonic poem, yet managed to finish it that same year.
Unfortunately, the composer was prone to revising his works, or, to be more specific, having other people revise them. Consequently the work we know today as A Night on the Bare Mountain is, in fact, quite an overhauled version of the original (which is lost) by Mussorgsky’s fellow Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov, and is often referred to as a Rimsky–Mussorgsky work.
The music is broken up into the following sections as outlined by Rimsky-Korsakov:
Subterranean sounds of supernatural voices – Appearance of the spirits, followed by that of Satan himself – Glorification of Satan and celebration of the Black Mass – The Sabbath revels – At the height of the orgies the bell of the village church, sounding in the distance, disperses the spirits of darkness – Daybreak.
It begins with wild, whirring sounds from the violins, through which a powerful trombone stalks its way. The woodwinds chatter, shriek and whine as the oboes take up the witches’ theme. After the climax of the Sabbath orgy, the orchestra falls almost silent and we hear the bell that heralds the dawn.
Boris Godunov
1869, Opera
This opera was originally written in the style of a historical pageant filled with bustling crowd-scenes rather than arias, but Mussorgsky soon found himself more interested in Tsar Boris – a man full of self-hatred and no self-esteem – to the point that work was revised (and re-orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov) to become a powerful and moving operatic study of the man.
Pictures at an Exhibition
1873, Orchestral
Initially this work was written as a piano suite, and it wasn’t until Maurice Ravel orchestrated it that it was made truly available to a general public, some forty-two years after Mussorgsky’s death.
In 1873 Mussorgsky was deeply distressed to learn that his close friend Victor Hartmann, a Russian architect and painter, had died at the age of thirty-nine. Shortly afterwards a mutual friend, the critic Vladimir Stassov, organised an exhibition of Hartmann’s watercolours and drawings at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, and Mussorgsky found the whole experience deeply moving.
As a tribute to his friend the composer decided to take ten of the pictures as subjects for a piano suite, and thereby produced probably his most famous work. It even has a place in ‘rock’ history: Emerson, Lake and Palmer worked their own version in the 19’70s.
Pictures at an Exhibition is a clever arrangement of ten ‘pictures’ interspersed with four ‘promenades’, where the composer wanted to give the overall feel of actually walking through the exhibition. As Stassov explains:
‘The composer here portrays himself walking now right, now left, now as an idle person, now urged to go near a picture; at times his joyous appearance is dampened, he thinks in sadness of his dead friend . . .’
The music opens with a solo trumpet theme before going into the first ‘picture’, called ‘The Gnome’. A ‘promenade’ takes us to the next ‘picture’ before we walk on to look at two more. A brief stroll takes us to two pictures that Hartmann had given to the composer which have now strangely disappeared. Finally, we arrive at the ‘Great Gate of Kiev’, which is a design the architect submitted for the possibility of being built. A procession complete with prancing horses is the cause for a re-emergence of the ‘promenade’ theme which initially opened the work.
Khovanshchina
**Khovanshchina: Intermezzo **
1886, Opera
Sometimes seen as a follow-up work to Boris Gudunov, this opera tells the story of the military revolt of the princes Khovansky against the modernisation and Westernisation of Russia.