Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881) was a
Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five".
He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic
period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical
identity, often in deliberate defiance of the
established conventions of Western music.
Many of his works were inspired by Russian history,
Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works
include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone
poem Night on Bald Mountain...(+)
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881) was a
Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five".
He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic
period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical
identity, often in deliberate defiance of the
established conventions of Western music.
Many of his works were inspired by Russian history,
Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works
include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone
poem Night on Bald Mountain and the piano suite
Pictures at an Exhibition.
For many years Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in
versions revised or completed by other composers. Many
of his most important compositions have posthumously
come into their own in their original forms, and some
of the original scores are now also available.
Victor Hartmann, a Russian painter and architect, was
one of Mussorgsky's close friends. When Hartmann died
in St. Petersburg in 1873 at the age of 41, the
composer was crushed. He wrote to the art critic
Vladimir Stasov, paraphrasing Shakespeare: "Why should
a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and the Hartmanns
perish?" In January 1874, the Russian Academy of Arts
organized an exhibition of Hartmann's work. Mussorgsky
attended the show, where he saw the varied images that
became the basis for Pictures of an Exhibition. On June
2, Mussorgsky began work on Pictures, a musical
impression of ten of Hartmann's paintings (plus five
"promenades") for piano, and finished the work later in
the same month.
Pictures of an Exhibition opens with a "Promenade" in
5/4 that serves as a unifying device throughout; it is
a portrayal of the composer himself walking from one
painting to the next. The first picture is "Gnomus,"
inspired by a design for a toy nutcracker that Hartmann
drew in 1869. Another promenade is followed by "The Old
Castle," a mysterious, lonely evocation built on pedal
tones. "Tuileries" is inspired by a watercolor of
children at play in the garden of the Tuileries. This
bright and impressionistic piece is followed by the
heavy tread of "Bydlo" (a Polish oxcart). Mussorgsky's
setting of "Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks" is a wildly
imaginative scherzo. A stern melody in a
Jewish-music-derived scale opens "Samuel Goldenberg and
Schmuyle," in which a wealthy Jew is portrayed by an
insistent repeating figure in the treble, a poor Jew in
the bass. The rapid patter of haggling housewives
characterizes "The Market Place in Limoges." In another
sudden change in mood, "Catacombs," which pictures
Hartmann himself touring a vast catacomb of skulls, is
rendered in naked chord progressions. "The Hut on
Fowl's Legs (Baba-Yaga)" was inspired by Hartmann's
design for a fourteenth century-style clock in the
shape of a witch's hat. Mussorgsky transforms it into a
miniature tone poem about Baba Yaga, the legendary
Russian witch who devoured the souls of children. After
a grand flourish, the work ends with "The Great Gate of
Kiev," inspired by a never-implemented design Hartmann
submitted to an architecture competition. Pictures of
an Exhibition comes to a close with rich, booming
chords which evoke bells.
Although Mussorgsky is known to have played Pictures of
an Exhibition in recital, the work did not appear in
print until 1886, five years after the composer's
death. It remained relatively little known until Ravel
made a colorful orchestration of it in 1922, and in
this form it has enjoyed even greater popularity than
the original.
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