Modest Mussorgsky(1839 — 1881)
Modest Mussorgsky
Empire russe
6 min read
Modest Mussorgsky was a 19th-century Russian composer and member of “The Five,” a group that sought to create a distinctly Russian national music. He is famous for his opera Boris Godunov and his piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1839 in Karevo, Russia, into a family of the minor nobility
- Member of “The Five” (alongside Balakirev, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Cui), champions of a Russian national music
- Composed his major opera Boris Godunov, premiered in 1874 at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg
- Composed Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), a piano suite later orchestrated by Maurice Ravel (1922)
- Died in 1881 in Saint Petersburg, at the age of 42, his health ruined by alcoholism
Works & Achievements
A major opera about a tsar consumed by remorse; it places the Russian people at the heart of the drama and profoundly renews the art of opera.
A piano suite inspired by the drawings of Viktor Hartmann, famous worldwide, especially in Ravel's orchestration (1922).
A symphonic poem evoking a witches' sabbath, based on Russian folklore.
An unfinished historical opera about the turmoil of 17th-century Russia, completed after his death.
An unfinished comic opera after Gogol, depicting Ukrainian village life.
A song cycle in which Death appears under several guises, the pinnacle of his vocal art.
A song cycle on the world of childhood, of great tenderness and a fresh realism.
Anecdotes
The famous final scene of the opera *Boris Godunov* shows a holy fool, the *Yurodivy*, who weeps over the fate of Russia. Mussorgsky was determined to give a voice to the common people and the humble, which was very rare in opera in his day.
*Pictures at an Exhibition* was composed in 1874 in tribute to his friend, the painter **Viktor Hartmann**, who died very young. In his imagination, Mussorgsky strolled through an exhibition of his friend's drawings, translating each image into music, linked together by a *Promenade* that recurs like a connecting thread.
Mussorgsky and four other composers (**Borodin**, **Rimsky-Korsakov**, **Balakirev** and **Cui**) formed *The Mighty Handful*. Most of them were amateurs in the noble sense: Borodin was a chemist, Rimsky-Korsakov a naval officer, and Mussorgsky himself a civil servant.
At the end of his life, Mussorgsky sank into alcoholism and poverty. The painter **Ilya Repin** painted his famous portrait just a few days before his death, in **1881**, in a military hospital in Saint Petersburg: it shows a man with a feverish gaze, wearing a dressing gown.
Many of his works remained unfinished or were judged “too crude” by his contemporaries. It was his friend Rimsky-Korsakov who revised and orchestrated several of his scores after his death, helping to make them known throughout the world.
Primary Sources
My Hartmann is seething just as Boris seethed. Sounds and ideas float in the air, I swallow them up to the point of indigestion, and I barely have time to throw them down on paper.
Art is a means of conversing with people, not an end in itself.
Life, wherever it shows itself; truth, however bitter; speaking boldly and frankly to people: that is my leaven, that is what I want.
Key Places
Village in the Pskov region where Mussorgsky was born into a family of landowners, in close contact with the countryside and peasant songs.
Imperial capital where he studied, pursued his career as a civil servant and composer, and where his operas were premiered.
Great opera house in Saint Petersburg where Boris Godunov was premiered in 1874.
Establishment in Saint Petersburg where Mussorgsky, ill and destitute, died in March 1881.
Necropolis of artists in Saint Petersburg where he was buried, near other great Russian musicians.
