Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский^[a], tr. Modest Petrovich Musorgsky^[b], IPA: [mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj] ^ⓘ; 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 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.

"Mussorgsky" redirects here. For other uses, see Mussorgsky (disambiguation).

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.

In popular culture[edit]

Mussorgsky's tone poem Night on Bald Mountain was used in the 1940 animated film Fantasia, accompanied by an animation of Chernobog summoning evil spirits on a mountain. It segues into Ave Maria by Franz Schubert.^[53]

The progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer performed and recorded an arrangement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition on 1971, featuring lyrics by Greg Lake, and released it as a live album of the same name.^[54]

The first 20 seconds of Michael Jackson's 1995 song "HIStory" relies on an orchestrated version of "The Bogatyr Gates (In the Capital in Kiev)" fragment of The Pictures at an Exhibition.^[55]

The 2020 film Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga starring Dan Stevens as Alexander Lemtov, a flamboyant singer representing Russia, had a non-typical Russian character development as an obvious cultural reference to Modest Mussorgsky, also known domestically for encouraging a female opera singer Daria Leonova to compose a classical song "Letter After the Ball".^[56]

Brown, David. Mussorgsky: His Life and Works. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 978-0-19-816587-3.

ISBN

Brown, David. . London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 2010. ISBN 978-0-571-26093-5 (accessed 29 June 2015).

Tchaikovsky: The Man and His Music

Brown, David, and Gerald E. Abraham. . New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. ISBN 978-0-393-31585-1.

Russian Masters 1: Glinka, Borodin, Balakirev, Musorgsky, Tchaikovsky

Modest Mussorgsky: His Life and Works, London: Rockliff, 1956

Calvocoressi, M. D.

Calvocoressi, M.D. "Mussorgsky's Youth: In the Light of the Latest Information". 20, no. 1 (January 1934): 1–14. JSTOR 738707 ISSN 0027-4631 (accessed 29 June 2015).(subscription required)

The Musical Quarterly

Juynboll, Floris. "Vladimir Rosing". The Record Collector 36, no. 3 (July, August, September 1991). pp. 194–96.

. "The New York Times Essential Library: Classical Music: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings". New York: Times Books, 2004. ISBN 978-0-8050-7070-5.

Kozinn, Allan

Musorgskiy, M., M. P. Musorgskiy: Letters, Gordeyeva, Ye. (editor), 2nd edition, Moscow: Music (publisher), 1984 [Мусоргский, М.П., М.П. Мусоргский: Письма, Гордеева, Е., Москва: Музыка, 1984]

Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay. My Musical Life, edited by Nadezhda Nikolaevna Rimskaia-Korsakova, translated from the second Russian edition by Judah A. Joffe and edited with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.

Smirnitsky, A., Russian-English Dictionary, Moscow: The Russian Language (publisher), 1985 [Смирницкий, А.И., Русско-английский словарь, Москва: Русский язык, 1985].

Musorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Taruskin, R.

tr. Bouis, Antonina W., Saint Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: The Free Press, 1995.

Volkov, Solomon

Sources

Gordeyeva, E. (ed.). M.P. Musorgsky v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov [Mussorgsky in the recollections of contemporaries] Moscow: s.n., 1989.

at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)

Free scores by Mussorgsky

The has compositions by Modest Mussorgsky

Mutopia Project

(with music samples)