Modest Mussorgsky

Russian composer

• Born: March 21, 1839
• Birthplace: Karevo, Pskov, Russia
• Died: March 28, 1881
• Place of death: St. Petersburg, Russia

A major figure in the Russian national school, Mussorgsky was the most original composer among the so-called Mighty Five. He excelled in creating dramatic works and songs in which natural speech inflections determined the vocal line, thus creating a striking realism, or naturalism.

Early Life

Modest Petrovitch Mussorgsky (mew-SORG-skee) was descended from wealthy landowners. His father, Peter, and his mother, Julia Chirikova, had four sons. The first two died in infancy; the third, Filaret, survived the youngest, Modest, by some twenty years. Much of what is known about the composer’s early years is drawn from some drafts (one in Russian, two in poor French) that he wrote himself and from the scattered recollections of his brother. Mussorgsky’s familiarity with Russian folklore is attributed to the family nurse, while his skill at the piano is credited to the lessons he took from his mother and, during the period 1849-1854, from Anton Herke in St. Petersburg. Mussorgsky, according to his own account, was able to play some small pieces by Franz Liszt by age seven and a concerto by John Field at the age of eleven.

In August, 1849, Modest and Filaret were taken by their father to St. Petersburg. There, Modest entered a preparatory school while studying with Herke; in 1852, he followed Filaret to the School for Cadets of the Guard. In this environment, the embryonic military man was exposed to a life of drinking, gambling, dancing, and debauchery. Although serious study was not a highly prized virtue at the institution, Mussorgsky seems to have taken an interest in history and German philosophy. His musical inclinations resulted in the dedication of a piano piece, Porte-Enseigne Polka , to his fellow students; it was published at the expense of his proud father, who died in 1853. Mussorgsky participated in the school choir and made a cursory study of old Russian church music, including some of the works of Dmitri Bortnyanski, though he did little composition.

In 1857, however, a year after leaving the cadet school, he met Aleksandr Dargomyzhski and César Cui; through them, he became acquainted with Stasov and Mily Alekseyevich Balakirev. At musical gatherings of these men and other artists, Mussorgsky was exposed to the music of such luminaries as Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, and Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, much of it performed on the piano. He then sought Balakirev as a teacher of composition. Shortly thereafter, he resigned his commission. Under Balakirev’s guidance, the youthful creator produced various early pieces, some of which were later lost.

Nervous disorders, at least in part attributed to excessive drinking, appeared as early as 1858. A visit to the estate of family friends near Moscow in 1859 for a rest resulted in a turn from a cosmopolitan outlook to a Russian orientation. On January 23, 1860, Anton Rubinstein conducted the orchestral version of Scherzo in B-flat major, thus marking Mussorgsky’s public debut as a composer. Another nervous crisis ensued, but after spending the summer at the estate of friends, the composer pronounced himself cured of the “mysticism” with which he had been afflicted.

Life’s Work

In 1861, an imperial decree declared the emancipation of the serfs, and Mussorgsky was immediately enmeshed in family difficulties associated with the change in the social order. Over the next two years, he was obliged to spend considerable time aiding his brother in managing the family estate. Mussorgsky, however, was not musically inactive during this period. The Intermezzo in modo classico (1860-1861) for piano and such songs as “Tsar Saul” (1863) manifest a musical maturity. The opera Judith by composer-critic Aleksandr Serov, performed on May 28, 1863, and a reading of Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbô (1862) that autumn, impelled the composer to to write a libretto based on Salammbô. Mussorgsky’s mélange of verse, with liberal borrowings from Russian poets and from Heinrich Heine, took its stage directions from Flaubert’s work. The accompanying music, which occupied his attention until 1866, contains borrowings from his earlier piece Oedipus in Athens , and some portions of Boris Godunov are prefigured.

In December of 1863, as a consequence of a major downturn in his financial status, Mussorgsky took a position as collegiate secretary in the engineering department of the Ministry of Communications, and, on February 1, 1864, he was elevated to the post of assistant head clerk in the barracks section of the same department. In December, 1866, Mussorgsky was made titular councilor, but, on May 10, 1867, he was fired. In late 1863, the composer joined a commune with five other young men, lived together with them in a flat, and engaged in discussions on life and art.

The group was strongly influenced by the novel Chto delat’? (1863; What Is to Be Done? , c. 1863), by Nikolay Chernyshevsky, written during the author’s imprisonment in the fortress of St. Petersburg. The burning issue with which Mussorgsky wrestled from this point onward was the subordination of art to life, as proposed by Chernyshevsky. Musical works that exemplify this turn in his creative thinking are the two-piece From Memories of Childhood and Rêverie (both compositions dating from 1865). That year was, indeed, a pivotal one. Following his mother’s death, Mussorgsky’s alcoholism became so serious that a case of delirium tremens caused the severing of his ties with communal life. His recovery at his brother’s flat allowed him to resume work, but the seeds of destruction were sown.

Salammbô was abandoned, probably because Mussorgsky had come to grips with his technical deficiencies and his lack of empathy, at the time, for the Eastern coloration the work demanded; however, in January, 1867, The Destruction of Sennacherib for chorus and orchestra was completed, and, late in 1866, such songs as “Darling Savishna,” “You Drunken Sot,” and “The Seminarist” flowed from his pen. Naturalism and irony were by then mainstays of the composer’s vision, and, as he provided his own texts to each of these three efforts, there is a distinctly personal level embodied therein. A modest degree of recognition was bestowed on the beleaguered artist when, with the earlier “Tell Me Why” (1858), “Darling Savishna” and “Hopak” were published in 1867, Mussorgsky’s first creative efforts to appear in print since the youthful Porte-Enseigne Polka.

In 1866, Mussorgsky, who had for some years been interested in Nikolai Gogol’s tale “St. John’s Eve” even to the point of considering it for an opera, wrote a piece based on the tale as a tone poem for orchestra. This work became Night on Bare Mountain (popularized in the film classic Fantasia, 1940). The unusual tonalities, intentionally “foul and barbarous,” disturbed the sensibilities of his more conventional contemporaries, and the work was never performed in Mussorgsky’s lifetime. During this same period, an orchestral setting of the Intermezzo in modo classico (with an added trio) and an unfinished tone poem inspired by the Pan-Slav Congress, King Poděbrad of Bohemia , give witness to the several directions in which Mussorgsky was moving.

After a hiatus of several years, Mussorgsky returned to the Dargomyzhski circle at a time when “Dargo” was working on The Stone Guest, based on Aleksander Pushkin’s play. By this time, he was officially a member of what Vladimir Stasov called “The Mighty Handful,” known familiarly as “The Five.” He also rejoined the ranks of the employed by accepting an appointment as assistant head clerk in the forestry department in the Ministry of Imperial Domains. Early in 1868, he busied himself with song composition, composing “The Orphan” and “Eremushka’s Lullaby.” In June of 1868, he set the first act of Gogol’s comedy The Marriage, and a few months later he commenced composition on Boris Godunov , based in part on a play by Pushkin, and with a libretto fashioned by the composer.

Unlike the usual fits and starts that accompanied many of his large-scale works, Mussorgsky’s energy and intensity were such that Boris Godunov was completed by December 15, 1869. Although Dargomyzhski died on January 5 of that year, his influence is notable. The Imperial Theatre rejected Boris Godunov for its “extraordinary modernism”: The piece departed from custom and operatic tradition; for example, it lacked a major female character. Undeterred, Mussorgsky set about to revise by excising politically objectionable material and by adding two “Polish Scenes” that included a female character, Marina, and a closing “Revolutionary Scene.” Individual portions, such as the “Coronation Scene” and the “Polonaise,” received favorable receptions, but the Committee of the Theater remained implacable in their shortsightedness.

On February 17, 1873, Eduard Nápravník directed the “Inn Scene” and the “Polish Act” at the Marinsky Theatre. Cui reported that the ovations were unprecedented. A full production was finally mounted on February 8, 1874, with Nápravník again on the podium. Although the public was enthusiastic (Mussorgsky took some thirty curtain calls), the critics were, for the most part, unmoved. The composer could take solace in that the public had at last recognized his immense talent. The realism and the intensity of the drama struck a nerve in the audience of the time that set into motion a new way of thinking about opera.

While Boris Godunov’s travails occupied several years of his lifetime, Mussorgsky, nevertheless, busied himself with other grand projects. During much of 1873 and 1875-1876, he devoted his attention to Khovanshchina , another historical opera; sustained periods of heavy drinking prevented uninterrupted work, however, and his last efforts on this work date from 1880. Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov completed the work in 1886.

During the summer of 1873, Mussorgsky began to share living quarters with a distant relative, the amateur poet Count Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov. The latter provided the texts to two song cycles, Sunless (1874) and Songs and Dances of Death (1875-1877). The six Sunless songs, reflecting a morbid text, contain much of Mussorgsky’s characteristic melodic recitative, but with increased attention to subtle shadings in harmony reflective of changes in mood. The piano is used in a most original manner to evoke or to suggest the appropriate atmosphere.

In the Songs and Dances of Death, there emerges a series of vividly painted dramas in cameo. The vocal declamation, now at a level of perfection, is blended with a melodic line that grips and sustains the listener’s attention. Golenishchev-Kutuzov provided the texts for two more individual songs, “Forgotten” (1874) and “The Vision” (1877). Mussorgsky wrote the texts to his remaining songs, “Epitaph” (1874), “The Nettle Mountain” (1874), and “Sphinx” (1875); only the latter was actually completed.

Stasov, who was growing increasingly alarmed at Mussorgsky’s dementia, encouraged the latter to visit Liszt, who had made known his admiration for The Nursery , a song cycle published in 1872. Mussorgsky declined; instead, he devoted his energy both to composition and to his civil service position. In June of 1874, he created the piano suite Pictures from an Exhibition , inspired by the architectural drawings and paintings of his friend Victor Hartmann, who had died only the year before. The musical depiction of such drawings as The Gnome, The Old Castle, The Hut of Baba-Yaga, and the concluding Great Gate at Kiev, unified by a recurring “Promenade” theme, include bold and unconventional harmonies that unsympathetic critics referred to as “crude” and “barbaric.”

Mussorgsky and Glinka’s sister were involved in the jubilee celebrations for Osip Petrov, the bass whose role of Varlaam in Boris Godunov set the standard for others to follow; during this general time frame (spring, 1876), the composer returned to a projected comic opera based on Gogol’s “Sorochintsy Fair,” which he had begun two years earlier. By 1878, he had abandoned the work once again. Another regression in his battle with the bottle caused Stasov to intercede with the state controller for the purpose of transferring Mussorgsky to his own control department. As the state controller was a devotee of folk songs and an admirer of “The Five,” he complied willingly with the entreaty; furthermore, he gave Mussorgsky permission to take a three-month leave in order to accompany the contralto Darya Leonova on a concert tour through central Russia and the Crimea. Delighting in the scenery, Mussorgsky composed some pleasant but inconsequential piano pieces and the popular “Song of the Flea.”

In November, 1879, Rimsky-Korsakov conducted excerpts from Khovanshchina in St. Petersburg. As the new year began, however, Mussorgsky was relieved of his duties in the Control Department. Friends came to his rescue by providing funds, with the stipulation that he complete Khovanshchina and Sorochintsy Fair. Neither composition was completed. Leonova provided him with employment as her accompanist and as a teacher of theory and arranger of duos, trios, and quartets for use by students in her singing school. At her summer residence at Oranienbaum, Mussorgsky conceived a plan for a suite for orchestra with harp and piano based on motives from folk tunes he had collected on his tours.

On February 15, 1881, Mussorgsky received the applause of the audience at a performance of The Destruction of Sennacherib given by Rimsky-Korsakov at the Free School of Music. Only eight days later, he suffered an apparent stroke on a visit to Leonova, and, on the following day, he was taken unconscious to the Nikolaevsky Military Hospital. Periods of lucidity enabled the noted portrait painter, Ilya Repin, to produce, in four sittings, the most frequently reproduced painting of the unruly genius; in it, he appears haggard and disheveled. According to Repin, a misguided attendant gave Mussorgsky a bottle of brandy to help celebrate his impending birthday. Craving the alcohol, Mussorgsky disobeyed doctor’s orders and, at five in the morning on March 28, 1881, he died.

Significance

In his last year of life, Mussorgsky provided a statement of his artistic principles: “Art is a means of communicating with people, not an aim in itself.” Only artist-reformers, he stated, such as Giovanni Palestrina, Johann Sebastian Bach, Christoph Gluck, Ludwig van Beethoven, Berlioz, and Liszt, create art’s laws, but these laws are not immutable. Art for its own sake was anathema to Mussorgsky; he believed that art should reflect life and communicate the common experiences of the human condition. Mussorgsky had particular empathy for the peasant class, despite his privileged early years; this earthiness, in fact, becomes a distinguishing feature of some of his most profound musical utterances.

During Mussorgsky’s formative years, the many and varied influences of Glinka, Balakirev, Schumann, and Liszt, among others, are readily identifiable, as are the technical deficiencies that created a host of detractors and that caused Rimsky-Korsakov and others to rework some of Mussorgsky’s pieces. Later, Mussorgsky aimed at the musical representation of human speech, but, from time to time, elements of Russian folk song are discernible, and they establish the lyrical quality that gives his work its unique blend of antipodal musical forces. His gift for satire is most observable in the songs, revealing Mussorgsky as a keen observer of all aspects and stations of life. His extraordinary talent for penetrating the inner recesses of the soul is nowhere better demonstrated than in Boris Godunov; because of this ability, the harmony, which would otherwise appear to be amateurish, seems perfectly suited to the requirements of dramatic expression.

Starting with the best intentions, “the fixers,” such as Rimsky-Korsakov, were determined to complete, to reorchestrate, and to revise much of Mussorgsky’s corpus. It has been argued that these refurbishings made the compositions accessible to audiences at large and contributed to their publication; however, the prettification of such masterworks as Boris Godunov and Night on Bare Mountain have stripped them of their raw, rough-hewn strength. Now that the original versions are available, there is no justification for automatically opting for the well-known revisions.

Bibliography

Brown, David. Musorgsky: His Life and Works. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. A scholarly account of Mussorgsky’s life and compositions. Devotes several chapters to analyses of the composition and music of Mussorgsky’s operas, particularly Boris Godunov.

Brown, Malcolm Hamrick, ed. Musorgsky: In Memoriam, 1881-1981. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1982. A collection of essays dealing with various aspects of Mussorgsky’s life and music. Among the most informative and revelatory are “Musorgsky and the Populist Age,” by Richard Hoops; “Musorgsky’s Interest in Judaica,” by Boris Schwarz; “Musorgsky’s Choral Style,” by Vladimir Morosan; “Editions of Boris Godunov,” by Robert William Oldani; and “Musorgsky and Shostakovitch,” by Laurel E. Fay.

Calvocoressi, Michael D. Modest Mussorgsky, His Life and Works. London: Rockliff, 1956. A major biographical study, this work contains musical illustrations, portraits of “The Five,” and a catalog of Mussorgsky’s compositions. A chronological account of the composer’s life and works is followed by two excellent chapters devoted to “Technique and Style.”

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Mussorgsky. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1946. This book, part of Dent’s Master Musicians series, presents the salient facts about Mussorgsky and his music. There are fine musical illustrations to highlight the descriptive analyses of important compositions. The appendixes are of practical value, including a calendar of Mussorgsky’s life with an adjoining column relating to contemporary musicians.

Emerson, Caryl. The Life of Musorgsky. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Compact biography that seeks to alter some of the misconceptions about Mussorgsky’s life.

Leyda, Jay, and Sergei Bertensson, eds. The Musorgsky Reader: A Life of Modest Petrovich Musorgsky in Letters and Documents. New York: W. W. Norton, 1947. This valuable source is essentially a life of Mussorgsky in letters and documents. They are presented in chronological order and appear in their entirety in English translations. The footnotes provide excellent explanatory data.

Montagu-Nathan, M. Mussorgsky. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1976. This book, part of the Masters of Russian Music series, is divided into four parts: career, Mussorgsky as operatic composer, choral and instrumental works, and songs. Emphasis is placed on what the author perceives as the high points in the composer’s career. A brief commentary is provided on all the major works.

Orlova, Alexandra. Musorgsky’s Days and Works. Edited and translated by Roy J. Guenther. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1983. This work contains an exhaustive day-by-day account of Mussorgsky’s life; it is, in effect, a biography in documents. Material is drawn from letters, diaries, newspaper and journal articles, and reviews. Sheds much new light on Mussorgsky’s travels with Darya Leonova.

Riesemann, Oskar von. Mussorgsky. Reprint. Translated by Paul England. New York: AMS Press, 1970. This popular biography encompasses all aspects and phases of the composer’s life. Despite occasional errors in small details, the book has much to admire, and the material is presented in a logical and orderly manner.