Modest Mussorgsky on Music Theory Print

Boris Godunov (opera)

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Composition history#

Note: Dates provided in this article for events taking place in Russia before 1918 are Old Style. By the close of 1868, Mussorgsky had already started and abandoned two important opera projects—the antique, exotic, romantic tragedy Salammbô, written under the influence of Aleksandr Serov’s Judith, and the contemporary, Russian, anti-romantic farce Marriage, influenced by Aleksandr Dargomïzhsky’s The Stone Guest. Mussorgsky’s next project would be a very original and successful synthesis of the opposing styles of these two experiments—the romantic-lyrical style of Salammbô, and the realistic style of Marriage. In the autumn of 1868, Vladimir Nikolsky, a professor of Russian history and language, and an authority on Pushkin, suggested to Mussorgsky the idea of composing an opera on the subject of Pushkin’s “dramatic chronicle” Boris Godunov. Boris the play, modelled on Shakespeare’s histories, was written in 1825 and published in 1831, but was not approved for performance by the state censors until 1866, almost 30 years after the author’s death. Production was permitted on condition that certain scenes were cut. Although enthusiasm for the work was high, Mussorgsky faced a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to his plans in that an Imperial ukaz of 1837 forbade the portrayal in opera of Russian Tsars (amended in 1872 to include only Romanov Tsars). Original Version When Lyudmila Shestakova, the sister of Mikhail Glinka, learned of Mussorgsky’s plans, she presented him with a volume of Pushkin’s dramatic works, interleaved with blank pages and bound, and using this, Mussorgsky began work in October 1868 preparing his own libretto. Pushkin’s drama consists of 25 scenes, written predominantly in blank verse. Mussorgsky adapted the most theatrically effective scenes, mainly those featuring the title character, along with a few other key scenes (Novodevichy, Cell, Inn), often preserving Pushkin’s verses. Mussorgsky worked rapidly, composing first the vocal score in about nine months (finished 18 July 1869), and completed the full score five months later (15 December 1869), at the same time working as a civil servant. In 1870, he submitted the libretto to the state censor for examination, and the score to the literary and music committees of the Imperial Theatres. However, the opera was rejected (10 February 1871) by a vote of 6 to 1, ostensibly for its lack of an important female role. Lyudmila Shestakova recalled the reply made by conductor Eduard Nápravník and stage manager Gennadiy Kondratyev of the Mariinsky Theatre in response to her question of whether Boris had been accepted for production: Other questionable accounts, such as Rimsky-Korsakov’s, allege that there were additional reasons for rejection, such as the work’s novelty: or 29 October 1872 (Lloyd-Jones). Recent researchers point out that there is insufficient evidence to support this claim, emphasizing that in his revision Mussorgsky had rectified the only objection the directorate is known to have made. In any case, Mussorgsky’s friends took matters into their own hands, arranging the performance of three scenes (the Inn and both Sandomierz scenes) at the Mariinsky Theatre on 5 February 1873, as a benefit for stage manager Gennadiy Kondratyev. The premiere took place on 27 January 1874, as a benefit for prima donna Yuliya Platonova. see Critical Reception in this article for details . Initial performances of Boris Godunov featured significant cuts. The entire Cell Scene was cut from the first performance, not, as is often supposed, due to censorship, but because Nápravník wished to avoid a lengthy performance, and frequently cut episodes he felt were ineffective. Later performances tended to be even more heavily cut, including the additional removal of the Kromï scene, likely for political reasons (starting 20 October 1876, the 13th performance). After protracted difficulties in obtaining the production of his opera, Mussorgsky was compliant with Nápravník’s demands, and even defended these mutilations to his own supporters. Boris Godunov was performed 21 times during the composer’s lifetime, and 5 times after his death (in 1881) before being withdrawn from the repertory on 8 November 1882. When Mussorgsky’s subsequent opera Khovanshchina was rejected for production in 1883, the Imperial Opera Committee reputedly said: “One radical opera by Mussorgsky is enough.” Boris Godunov did not return to the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre until 9 November 1904, when the Rimsky-Korsakov edition was presented under conductor Feliks Blumenfeld with bass Feodor Chaliapin in the title role.

Khovanshchina

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Compositional history#

The libretto was written out by 1879, and shows some inconsistencies with the actual text set to music. The above table is based on those of Richard Taruskin (in Musorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue) and (in the preface to his edition of the vocal score).

Performance history#

The St. Petersburg and world premiere took place on 21 February (9 February O.S.), 1886 using the Rimsky-Korsakov edition. Also in St. Petersburg on 27 October 1893 the opera was presented by artists of the Russian Opera Society. The Russian Private Opera presented the Moscow premiere at the Solodovnikov Theater on 12 November 1897 conducted by Michele Esposito, with scene designs by Konstantin Korovin, Apollinary Vasnetsov, and Sergey Malyutin. There were 1910 and 1911 productions in the two cities, the first by the Zimin Opera in Moscow and conducted by Palitsīn scenes by Matorin, while the second was at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre and conducted by Albert Coates. Khovanshchina reached the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in 1913, where Emil Cooper (Kuper) conducted a Diaghilev production, in a new orchestration written collaboratively by Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel. Because Feodor Chaliapin was unwilling to sing Dosifei in any orchestration other than Rimsky-Korsakov’s, the Parisians heard a hybrid version which proved unsuccessful, and this orchestration was forgotten. Only the finale, which was composed by Stravinsky, has survived and was published in 1914. It occasionally replaces Dmitri Shostakovich’s finale in some productions, such as Claudio Abbado’s 1989 production in Vienna. Also in 1913, it was presented in London at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. It was produced in New York for the first time in 1931. The Shostakovich version, in Pavel Lamm’s edition, was first presented on 25 November 1960 at the Kirov Theater, conducted by Sergey Yeltsin with sets designed by Fedorovsky. Khovanshchina was not staged by New York’s Metropolitan Opera until 1950, although excerpts were performed by the Met as early as 1919. The 1950 production was sung in English and featured Risë Stevens as Marfa, Lawrence Tibbett as Prince Ivan and Jerome Hines as Dosifei. The sets and costumes were designed by the Russo-Lithuanian artist Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. That production received only four performances in 1950, and the Met did not stage Khovanshchina again until 1985, this time in Russian. The new production was staged by August Everding, designed by Ming Cho Lee, and used the Shostakovich orchestration, with Martti Talvela as Dosifei and Natalia Rom as Emma. It has since been revived several times at the Met, most recently in a 2012 run, during which Stravinsky’s final scene was employed there for the first time. Performances of Khovanshchina by visiting Russian companies have also appeared at the Met. More recently, it was performed by Welsh National Opera in both Wales and England as well as at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich under Kent Nagano in 2007. Khovanshchina is not seen on stage often outside Russia, but it has been recorded complete 23 times, including seven videos.

Night on Bald Mountain

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Name#

The original Russian title of the tone poem, Иванова ночь на лысой горе, translates literally as Saint John’s Eve on Bald Mountain, usually shortened to Night on Bald Mountain. However, due to several ambiguities, the composition is also known by a number of alternative titles in English. The Russian word “ночь” (noch′) is literally “night” in English, but idiomatically this would refer to the night following St. John’s Day, variously observed between 21 June (the summer solstice) and 25 June. The night before St. John’s Day is usually referred to as “St. John’s Eve” in English; Russian does not make this distinction. Bald Mountain is the most familiar translation of “лысой горе” (lysoy gore) in English, and is also the most literal. The adjective “bald” is commonly used in English place names for barren hills, mountains, and other features, and so is also idiomatic. However, because the most familiar use of “bald” describes hairlessness, this part of the title is also known as “Bare Mountain”. The use of “bald” to describe barren landscapes is common in European languages. In French, the piece is known as and in Italian (A Night on Bald Mountain). Some performances of the work also insert the article “the” before “Bald Mountain” or “Bare Mountain”. Articles are not used in Russian, but are often applied to nouns when translating Russian into languages that regularly use articles, such as English and French. However, because the title of the work refers to a specific place called “Bald Mountain”, an article would not normally be used in English.

Pictures at an Exhibition

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Composition history#

The composition is based on pictures by the artist, architect, and designer Viktor Hartmann. It was probably in 1868 that Mussorgsky first met Hartmann, not long after the latter’s return to Russia from abroad. Both men were devoted to the cause of an intrinsically Russian art and quickly became friends. They likely met in the home of the influential critic Vladimir Stasov, who followed both of their careers with interest. According to Stasov’s testimony, in 1868, Hartmann gave Mussorgsky two of the pictures that later formed the basis of Pictures at an Exhibition. In 1870, Mussorgsky dedicated the second song (“In the Corner”) of the cycle The Nursery to Hartmann. Stasov remarked that Hartmann loved Mussorgsky’s compositions, and particularly liked the “Scene by the Fountain” in his opera Boris Godunov. Mussorgsky had abandoned the scene in his original 1869 version, but at the requests of Stasov and Hartmann, he reworked it for Act 3 in his revision of 1872. The years 1873–74 are associated with the staging of Boris Godunov, the zenith of Mussorgsky’s career as a composer—at least from the standpoint of public acclaim. Mussorgsky’s distant relative, friend, and roommate during this period, Arseniy Golenishchev-Kutuzov, describing the January 1874 premiere of the opera, remarked: “During the winter, there were, I think, nine performances, and each time the theatre was sold out, each time the public tumultuously called for Mussorgsky.” The composer’s victory, however, was overshadowed by the hostile press he received from critics. Other circumstances conspired to dampen Mussorgsky’s spirits. The disintegration of The Mighty Handful and their failure to understand his artistic goals contributed to the isolation he experienced as an outsider in Saint Petersburg’s musical establishment. Golenishchev-Kutuzov wrote: " The Mighty Handful’s banner was held by Mussorgsky alone; all the other members had left it and pursued his own path …" Hartmann’s sudden death on 4 August 1873 from an aneurysm shook Mussorgsky along with others in Russia’s art world. The loss of the artist, aged only 39, plunged the composer into deep despair. Stasov helped to organize a memorial exhibition of over 400 Hartmann works in the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg in February and March 1874. Mussorgsky lent to the exhibition the two pictures Hartmann had given him, and viewed the show in person. Later in June, two-thirds of the way through composing his song cycle Sunless, Mussorgsky was inspired to compose Pictures at an Exhibition, quickly completing the score in three weeks (2–22 June 1874). In a letter to Stasov (see photo), probably written on 12 June 1874, he describes his progress: The music depicts his tour of the exhibition, with each of the ten numbers of the suite serving as a musical illustration of an individual work by Hartmann. Five days after finishing the composition, he wrote on the title page of the manuscript a tribute to Vladimir Stasov, to whom the work is dedicated. One month later, he added an indication that he intended to have it published. Golenishchev-Kutuzov gives the following (perhaps biased) account of the work’s reception among Mussorgsky’s friends and colleagues and an explanation for his failure to follow through on his plans to publish it: In August, Mussorgsky completed the last two songs of Sunless and then resumed work on Khovanshchina, composing the prelude to Act 1 (“Dawn on the Moscow River”) in September.

Salammbô (Mussorgsky)

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Composition history#

The Russian translation of Flaubert’s 1862 novel was published serially in the Saint Petersburg journal Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1863, and was read with enthusiasm by the six members of the commune in which the composer was then living. Mussorgsky was likely influenced in his choice of subject by having recently heard Aleksandr Serov’s Judith, which premiered on 16 May 1863, and which shares with Salammbô an exotic setting and similar narrative details. The unfinished vocal score consists of three scenes and three separate numbers: Two numbers (No.2 and No.5) were orchestrated by the composer. Zoltán Peskó claims to have found a Mussorgsky orchestration of No. 1 in the library of the Paris Conservatory, but this version has disappeared. The chorus of priestesses and warriors (Act 2, Scene 2, Episode 3: “After the theft of the Zaimph”) is a reworking of the “Scene in the Temple: Chorus of the People”, the only surviving number from Oedipus in Athens (1858-1861), Mussorgsky’s earliest stage-work. In Mathô’s monologue in the dungeon (the passage “I shall die alone”), the text is borrowed from the poem Song of the Captive Iroquois, by Alexander Polezhayev. The theme of this passage, accompanying a new text, was recycled in 1877 in the chorus Joshua see Subsequent use of musical materials in this article for more details . Mussorgsky’s orchestration in Salammbô is quite ahead of its time. One example of a modern idea is, in the projected scoring for the “Hymn to Tanit” (Act 2, Scene 2), the abundance and variety of percussion, in addition to a mixture of pianos, harps, and glockenspiels of a sort which only reappeared fifty years later.

Song of the Flea

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Background#

In 1879, Mussorgsky quit a civil service job, and, from August to November, accompanied contralto Darya Leonova (Дарья Леонова, 1829-1896) on a tour to Southern Russia, as her piano accompanist. He was much impressed by Leonova’s singing, and composed the “Song of the Flea” during this trip or soon after he had returned to St. Petersburg, dedicating it to Leonova. It is unknown when the song was played in a public recital for the first time, but it is recorded that this song was sung in recitals by Leonova in April and May 1880. The music score of the “Song of the Flea” was published after Mussorgsky’s death, in 1883 with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov as the editor. Its orchestration by Igor Stravinsky became available in 1914. The “Song of the Flea” is probably the best known of the 65 or so songs that Mussorgsky composed. It was originally composed for a female voice, but it has been sung by bass singers, such as Feodor Chaliapin. Chaliapin’s rendition of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. The tenor, Vladimir Rosing, also recorded the “Song of the Flea”, once for Vocalion in the early 1920s, and again for Parlophone in 1933.

Songs and Dances of Death

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Songs#

Songs and Dances of Death consists of four individual songs, as follows: 1. Lullaby (Колыбельная) (14 April 1875) (in C minor–A minor) :A mother in a peasant hut cradles her sick child, who grows more feverish. Death appears, and tries to console the frantic mother and her child. The mother’s lines in the song are marked by agitato markings and sixteenth-note rests indicating her fear and panic. In contrast, Death’s lines are slow and deliberate, marked with lento and tranquillo markings. Each of Death’s interjections ends with a “lullaby” motive directed to the child. Eventually, the mother accepts her child’s fate, and allows Death to rock the child to eternal sleep. 2. Serenade (Серенада) (11 May 1875) (in G minor–F-sharp minor) :The knightly figure of Death sings a serenade outside the window of a dying adolescent girl, Death acts as both the wooer and the wooed, simultaneously attempting to “seduce” the dying girl with the beauty of his serenade as he is grotesquely seduced by the dying girl’s sickly pallor. 3. Trepak (Трепак) (17 February 1875) (in D minor - A-flat major) :A drunken peasant stumbles outside into the snow and becomes caught in a blizzard. The figure of Death invites him to dance a folk-dance called the Trepak. In this song, Death is first portrayed as a terror, as the fierce blizzard envelops the peasant, then as a seducer, as she speaks sweet words to the peasant to convince him to lie down in the snow. In the final section of the song, Death acts as a comforter, singing a lullaby of summer days as the man freezes to death. 4. The Field Marshal (Полководец) (5 June 1877) (in E-flat minor–D minor) :After a narrative depiction of a bloody battle, The figure of Death appears as an officer to survey the aftermath, illuminated by the moon. She addresses the dead troops, tells them that while they were enemies in life, they are comrades in death, and she is their commanding officer. She assures them that although the living will forget about them, she will remember them, and will harden the earth above them so that they cannot be resurrected.

Sunless (song cycle)

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Song titles#

The individual song titles are as follows: #“В четырех стенах” (“Within four walls”) – D major #“Меня в толпе ты не узнала” (“Thou didst not know me in the crowd”) – D major #“Окончен праздный шумный день” (“The noisy festival day is ended”) – C major #“Скучай” (“Boredom: For the album of a fashionable young lady”) – B minor #“Элегия” (“Elegy”) – B minor, ending in F-sharp minor #“Над рекой” (“By the River”) – C-sharp major

The Fair at Sorochyntsi

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Composition history#

Mussorgsky worked on the opera between 1874 and 1880, in competition with his work on Khovanshchina (1872–1880); both were incomplete at the time of his death in 1881. He reused some music that he had written previously (such as the “Market Scene” from Act II of the ill-fated Mlada of 1872, rewritten for the opening scene of Fair). Incorporation of the music of Night on Bald Mountain as a dream sequence involving the hero was a late addition to the scenario in the course of composition, despite the fact that such an episode is not suggested by the original story. Although Mussorgsky managed to complete some numbers and even some of the orchestration (the whole prelude and the Andantino of Parasya’s Dumka), significant portions of the scenario were left only in bare sketches, or without any music at all. Several subsequent composers and editors (cited below) played partial or maximal roles in bringing the work into a performable state. The first staged performance, with spoken sections, occurred on 8 October 1913 in Moscow under Konstantin Saradzhev. Beginning in 1917, the first of several fully-sung versions reached the stage.

The Nursery

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Series 1: The Nursery#

:1. With Nanny (B-flat major) ::A child begs the nurse to tell a story, first about the awful bogey-man who carries naughty children into the forest and devours them, and later about a fairy-tale Tsar and Tsaritsa who live in a rich palace by the sea. :2. In the Corner (F major) ::The nurse berates Mishenka for spoiling her knitting and sends him to the corner. :3. The Beetle (F major) ::A child relates to the nurse an encounter with a large beetle. :4. With the Doll (A-flat major) ::A child sings a lullaby to her doll. :5. At Bedtime (A-flat major) ::A child recites his prayers.

Zhenitba

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Composition history#

The idea to set Gogol’s Marriage to music came from the advice and influence of Alexander Dargomyzhsky, who began to compose his own experimental opera, The Stone Guest, to Alexander Pushkin’s tragedy just two years earlier (in 1866). Dargomyzhsky declared that the text would be set “just as it stands, so that the inner truth of the text should not be distorted”, and in a manner that abolished the ‘unrealistic’ division between aria and recitative in favour of a continuous mode of syllabic but lyrically heightened declamation somewhere between the two. In 1868, Mussorgsky rapidly set the first eleven scenes of Zhenitba, with his priority being to render into music the natural accents and patterns of the play’s naturalistic and deliberately humdrum dialogue. Mussorgsky’s aim was to create individual musical signatures for each character using the natural rhythms of the text. The composer noted: :I would very much like my characters on the stage to speak like living people, and in such a manner that the character and force of the intonation, supported by the orchestra and forming the background for their speech, would gain its object, that is, my music must be the artistic reproduction of human speech in all its subtle nuances. The first act was completed in 1868 in a vocal score and the composer noted, that summer: :I have completed the first act. It rained without stopping for three days running and I worked without stopping in keeping with the weather. The Marriage gave me not a minute of calm – so I wrote it. The score is inscribed with the following details: “The work began on Tuesday, June 11, 1868 in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), and was finished on Tuesday, July 8, 1868 in the village Shilovo, Tula Oblast.” The Marriage was one of Mussorgsky’s first musical masterpieces. According to one critic, it was an experiment in Russian opera that used “satirical, grotesque musical language, with all its jolting contrasts and exaggerations, when the composer, in the best Russian-Petersburg tradition, mocks his characters but at the same time ‘weeps’ over them.”