Συμφωνικό ποίημα
του Μόδεστου Μουσόργκσκι, από τα δημοφιλέστερα έργα της ρωσικής λόγιας
μουσικής. Είναι εμπνευσμένο από ένα διήγημα του συγγραφέα Νικολάι Γκόγκολ και
βασίζεται σ' ένα ρωσικό θρύλο. Το έργο είχε μία μακρόχρονη συνθετική
περιπέτεια.
Ο Μόδεστος
Μουσόργκσκι (1839-1881) υπήρξε ένας από τους σημαντικότερους ρώσους συνθέτες,
μέλος της Ομάδας των
Πέντε, που έθεσε τις
βάσεις της ρωσικής εθνικής σχολής στη μουσική. Οι πρώτες ιδέες για τη σύνθεση
του έργου κατέβηκαν στο μυαλό του Μουσόργκσκι το 1860, σε ηλικία 21 ετών. Ήθελε
να γράψει μια όπερα με βάση το διήγημα του Γκόγκολ «Την παραμονή του Ιβάν
Κούπαλα». Το διήγημα αναφέρεται σ' ένα χωρικό, που είναι αυτόπτης μάρτυς ενός
χορού δαιμόνων την παραμονή της γιορτής του Αγίου Ιωάννου του Προδρόμου (23 Ιουνίου) στο
Φαλακρό Βουνό (Λίσα Χόρα), κοντά στο Κίεβο. Οι ιδέες του αυτές δεν υλοποιήθηκαν
ποτέ.
Στις αρχές
Ιουνίου 1867 ο Μουσόργκσκι άρχισε να γράφει το έργο υπό τη μορφή συμφωνικού
ποιήματος (σύνθεση για ορχήστρα, που προσπαθεί να αποδώσει με μουσικά μέσα
εξωμουσικό περιεχόμενο, για παράδειγμα εντυπώσεις από ανθρώπους, τοπία,
ζωγραφικούς πίνακες ή λογοτεχνικά έργα), το οποίο τελείωσε μέσα σε 12 ημέρες,
στις 23 Ιουνίου. Του έδωσε τον τίτλο Η Νύχτα του Αγίου Ιωάννη στο Φαλακρό Βουνό. Γεμάτος χαρά για τη δημιουργία του
διακήρυξε: «είναι ένα αυθεντικά ρωσικό επίτευγμα, πλήρως απελευθερωμένο από τις
γερμανικές επιρροές… γεννημένο στο ρωσικό χώμα και μεγαλωμένο, όπως το ρώσικο
καλαμπόκι».
Όμως, γρήγορα
προσγειώθηκε στην πραγματικότητα, όταν ο μέντοράς Μίλι Μπαλακίρεφ (μέλος της Ομάδας των Πέντε) στάθηκε ιδιαίτερα επικριτικός για το έργο. Η
πρώτη εκδοχή έμεινε στο συρτάρι και δεν εμφανίσθηκε παρά μόνο το 1868.
Το 1872 ο
Μουσόργκσκι αναθεώρησε το έργο. Του προσέθεσε χορωδιακά μέρη και το ενσωμάτωσε
στη συλλογική όπερα - μπαλέτο Μλάντα, που
ολοκληρώθηκε πολύ αργότερα. Το 1880 επεχείρησε την τρίτη αναθεώρηση του Φαλακρού Βουνού και το ενσωμάτωσε στην ανολοκλήρωτη όπερά
του Το Παζάρι του
Σοροσνίτζι.
Η προγραμματική
βάση του έργου από τον Μουσόργκσκι είναι: Θορυβώδεις υπερφυσικές φωνές.
Εμφάνιση των Πνευμάτων του Σκότους και του Θεού Τσέρνομπογκ. Δοξαστικό του
Μαύρου Θεού. Μαύρη Λειτουργία. Γιορτή των Μαγισσών, που διακόπτεται από τους
ήχους μιας μακρινής καμπάνας της εκκλησίας του χωριού. Τα Πνεύματα
εξαφανίζονται. Αυγή.
Το 1881 ο
αλκοολικός Μουσόργκσι έφυγε από τη ζωή σε ηλικία μόλις 42 ετών και οι φίλοι του
προσπάθησαν να βάλουν σε τάξη το αδημοσίευτο και ανολοκλήρωτο έργο του. Ο φίλος
του συνθέτης Ρίμσκι - Κόρσακοφ (μέλος της Ομάδας των Πέντε) ανέλαβε να ενορχηστρώσει το έργο, το οποίο έκανε
πρεμιέρα στις 27 Οκτωβρίου 1886 στην Αγία Πετρούπολη. Η εκδοχή του
Ρίμσκι - Κόρσακοφ είναι αυτή που ακούγεται σήμερα στις αίθουσες συναυλιών και
τις ηχογραφήσεις.
Το έργο του
Μουσόργκσκι απασχόλησε πολλούς σύγχρονους μουσικούς.Ο διάσημος μαέστρος
Λέοπολντ Στοκόφσκι παρουσίασε τη δική του εκδοχή το 1940 για τις ανάγκες της
ταινίας κινουμένων σχεδίων του Ντίσνεϊ Φαντασία. Ο ιάπωνας συνθέτης ηλεκτρονικής μουσικής
Ισάο Τομίτα γοητεύτηκε από το έργο και ο Ντάγκλας Γκάμλι το χρησιμοποίησε στο
σάουντρακ της ταινίας Asylum
(1972).
Η ντίσκο εκδοχή
του Φαλακρού Βουνού ακούστηκε στο σάουντρακ της ταινίας
«Πυρετός το Σαββατόβραδο» (1977), ενώ το γερμανικό progressive/ death metal συγκρότημα Mekong Delta μας έδωσε τη χεβιμεταλάδικη άποψη για το έργο, στο άλμπουμ Dances of Death (1990).
Modest Mussorgsky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Mussorgsky"
redirects here. For other uses, see Mussorgsky (disambiguation).
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: Модéст Петрóвич Мýсоргский; IPA: [mɐˈdʲest 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.
Many of his works were inspired
by Russian history, Russian
folklore, and other nationalist themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poemNight 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 recently come into
their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also
available.
Name
The spelling and
pronunciation of the composer's name has been a matter of some controversy.
The family name
is derived from a 15th or 16th century ancestor, Roman Vasilyevich Monastïryov,
who was mentioned in the Velvet Book, the 17th century genealogy of Russian boyars. Roman
Vasilyevich bore the nickname "Musorga", and was the grandfather of
the first 'Mussorgsky'. The composer is of the lineage of Ryurik, the legendary
founder of the Russian state.[1]
In Mussorgsky
family documents, the spelling of the name varies: 'Musarsky', 'Musersky',
'Muserskoy', 'Musirskoy', 'Musorsky', and 'Musursky'. According to his
baptismal record the composer's name is 'Musersky'.[2]
In early (up to
1858) letters to Miliy Balakirev, the composer signed his name
'Musorsky' (Russian: Мусoрский, Musorskiy).[3] The
'g' made its first appearance in a letter to Balakirev in 1863.[4] Mussorgsky
used this new spelling (Russian: Мусoргский, Musorgskiy) to the end of his life, but occasionally reverted
to the earlier 'Musorsky'.[5][6] The
addition of the 'g' to the name was likely initiated by the composer's elder
brother Filaret to obscure the resemblance of the name's root to an unsavory
Russian word:[7]
мýсoр (músor) — n. m. debris,
rubbish, refuse[8]
Mussorgsky
apparently did not take the new spelling seriously, and played on the 'rubbish'
connection in letters to Vladimir
Stasov and Stasov's family, routinely signing his name 'Musoryanin',
or 'garbage-dweller' (cf. dvoryanin:
'nobleman').[6]
The first
syllable of the name originally received the stress (i.e. 'MÚS-ər-ski'), and does so
to this day in Russia
The addition of
the 'g' and the accompanying shift in stress to the second syllable (i.e.
'Mu-SÓRK-ski'), sometimes described as a Polish variant,
was supported by Filaret Mussorgsky's descendants until his line was
extinguished in the 20th century. Their example was followed by many
influential Russians, such as Fyodor
Shalyapin, Nikolay Golovanov, and Tikhon
Khrennikov, who, perhaps dismayed that the great composer's name was
"reminiscent of garbage", supported the erroneous second-syllable
stress that has also become entrenched in the West.[10]
The Western
convention of doubling the first 's', which is not observed in scholarly
literature (e.g. The Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians), likely arose because in many Western European languages a single intervocalic 's' often becomes voiced to
'z' (e.g. 'music'), unlike Slavic
languages where it remains unvoiced.
Life
Early years
Mussorgsky was
born in Karevo, Toropets, Pskov
region, Imperial Russia, 400 km (250 mi) south of
Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg
Mussorgsky's
parents planned the move to Saint
Petersburg Cadet
School Cadet School
Music remained
important to him, however. Sutgof's daughter was also a pupil of Herke, and
Mussorgsky was allowed to attend lessons with her.[12] His
skills as a pianist made him much in demand by fellow-cadets; for them he would
play dances interspersed with his own improvisations.[15] In
1856 Mussorgsky – who had developed a strong interest in history and studied
German philosophy – successfully graduated from the Cadet School
Maturity
In October 1856
the 17-year-old Mussorgsky met the 22-year-old Alexander
Borodin while both men served at a military hospital in Saint Petersburg
His little
uniform was spic and span, close-fitting, his feet turned outwards, his hair
smoothed down and greased, his nails perfectly cut, his hands well groomed like
a lord's. His manners were elegant, aristocratic: his speech likewise,
delivered through somewhat clenched teeth, interspersed with French phrases,
rather precious. There was a touch—though very moderate—of foppishness. His
politeness and good manners were exceptional. The ladies made a fuss of him. He
sat at the piano and, throwing up his hands coquettishly, played with extreme
sweetness and grace (etc) extracts from Trovatore, Traviata,
and so on, and around him buzzed in chorus: "Charmant, délicieux!"
and suchlike. I met Modest Petrovich three or four times at Popov's in this
way, both on duty and at the hospital."[17]
More portentous
was Mussorgsky's introduction that winter to Alexander Dargomyzhsky, at that time the
most important Russian composer after Mikhail
Glinka. Dargomyzhsky was impressed with Mussorgsky's pianism. As a result,
Mussorgsky became a fixture at Dargomyzhsky's soirées. There, critic Vladimir
Stasov later recalled, he began "his true musical life."[18]
Over the next two
years at Dargomyzhsky's, Mussorgsky met several figures of importance in Russia
In 1858, within a
few months of beginning his studies with Balakirev, Mussorgsky resigned his
commission to devote himself entirely to music.[21] He
also suffered a painful crisis at this time. This may have had a spiritual
component (in a letter to Balakirev the young man referred to "mysticism
and cynical thoughts about the Deity"), but its exact nature will probably
never be known. In 1859, the 20-year-old gained valuable theatrical experience
by assisting in a production of Glinka's opera A Life for the Tsar on the Glebovo
estate of a former singer and her wealthy husband; he also met Anatoly
Lyadov and enjoyed a formative visit to Moscow
In spite of this
epiphany, Mussorgsky's music still leaned more toward foreign models; a
four-hand piano sonata which he produced in 1860 contains his only movement insonata form.
Nor is any 'nationalistic' impulse easily discernible in the incidental music
for Serov's play Oedipus in Athens, on which he worked between the
ages of 19 and 22 (and then abandoned unfinished), or in the Intermezzo
in modo classico for piano solo (revised and orchestrated in 1867).
The latter was the only important piece he composed between December 1860 and
August 1863: the reasons for this probably lie in the painful re-emergence of
his subjective crisis in 1860 and the purely objective difficulties which
resulted from theemancipation of the serfs the following
year – as a result of which the family was deprived of half its estate, and
Mussorgsky had to spend a good deal of time in Karevo unsuccessfully attempting
to stave off their looming impoverishment.
By this time,
Mussorgsky had freed himself from the influence of Balakirev and was largely
teaching himself. In 1863 he began an opera – Salammbô – on which he worked
between 1863 and 1866 before losing interest in the project. During this period
he had returned to Saint Petersburg
"Real
life" affected Mussorgsky painfully in 1865, when his mother died; it was
at this point that the composer had his first serious bout of either alcoholism
or dipsomania.
The 26-year-old was, however, on the point of writing his first realistic songs
(including "Hopak" and "Darling Savishna", both of them
composed in 1866 and among his first "real" publications the
following year). 1867 was also the year in which he finished the original
orchestral version of his Night on Bald Mountain (which,
however, Balakirev criticised and refused to conduct, with the result that it
was never performed during Mussorgsky's lifetime).
Peak
Mussorgsky's
career as a civil servant was by no means stable or secure: though he was
assigned to various posts and even received a promotion in these early years,
in 1867 he was declared 'supernumerary' – remaining 'in service', but receiving
no wages. Decisive developments were occurring in his artistic life, however.
Although it was in 1867 that Stasov first referred to the 'kuchka' ('The Five') of Russian composers
loosely grouped around Balakirev, Mussorgsky was by then ceasing to seek Balakirev's
approval and was moving closer to the older Alexander Dargomyzhsky .
Since 1866
Dargomïzhsky had been working on his opera The Stone Guest, a version of
the Don
Juan story with a Pushkin text
that he declared 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.
Under the
influence of this work (and the ideas of Georg Gottfried Gervinus, according to
whom "the highest natural object of musical imitation is emotion, and the
method of imitating emotion is to mimic speech"), Mussorgsky in 1868
rapidly set the first eleven scenes of Nikolai
Gogol's The Marriage (Zhenitba), with his
priority being to render into music the natural accents and patterns of the
play's naturalistic and deliberately humdrum dialogue. This work marked an
extreme position in Mussorgsky's pursuit of naturalistic word-setting: he
abandoned it unorchestrated after reaching the end of his 'Act 1', and though
its characteristically 'Mussorgskyian' declamation is to be heard in all his
later vocal music, the naturalistic mode of vocal writing more and more became
merely one expressive element among many.
A few months
after abandoning Zhenitba, the 29-year-old Mussorgsky was
encouraged to write an opera on the story of Boris
Godunov. This he did, assembling and shaping a text from Pushkin's play
and Karamzin's history. He completed the large-scale
score the following year while living with friends and working for the Forestry
Department. In 1871, however, the finished opera was rejected for theatrical
performance, apparently because of its lack of any 'prima donna'
role. Mussorgsky set to work producing a revised and enlarged 'second version'.
During the next year, which he spent sharing rooms with Rimsky-Korsakov, he
made changes that went beyond those requested by the theatre. In this version
the opera was accepted, probably in May 1872, and three excerpts were staged at
the Mariinsky Theatre in 1873. It is often
asserted that in 1872 the opera was rejected a second time, but no specific
evidence for this exists.
By the time of
the first production of Boris Godunov in February 1874,
Mussorgsky had taken part in the ill-fated Mlada project
(in the course of which he had made a choral version of his Night on Bald Mountain) and had
begun Khovanshchina. Though far from being a critical
success – and in spite of receiving only a dozen or so performances – the
popular reaction in favour of Boris made this the peak of
Mussorgsky's career.
Decline
From this peak a
pattern of decline becomes increasingly apparent. Already the Balakirev circle
was disintegrating. Mussorgsky was especially bitter about this. He wrote toVladimir
Stasov, "[T]he mighty Koocha has degenerated into
soulless traitors."[22] In
drifting away from his old friends, Mussorgsky had been seen to fall victim to
'fits of madness' that could well have been alcoholism-related. His
friend Viktor Hartmann had died, and his relative and
recent roommate Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov (who
furnished the poems for the song-cycle Sunless and would go on to provide
those for the Songs and Dances of Death) had moved
away to get married.
While alcoholism
was Mussorgsky's personal weakness, it was also a behavior pattern considered
typical for those of Mussorgsky's generation who wanted to oppose the
establishment and protest through extreme forms of behavior.[23] One
contemporary notes, "an intense worship of Bacchus was considered to be
almost obligatory for a writer of that period. It was a showing off, a 'pose,'
for the best people of the [eighteen-]sixties." Another writes,
"Talented people in Russia Saint
Petersburg
For a time
Mussorgsky was able to maintain his creative output: his compositions from 1874
include Sunless, theKhovanschina Prelude, and the piano
suite Pictures at an Exhibition (in
memory of Hartmann); he also began work on another opera based on Gogol, The Fair at Sorochyntsi (for which
he produced another choral version of Night on Bald Mountain).
In the years that
followed, Mussorgsky's decline became increasingly steep. Although now part of
a new circle of eminent personages that included singers, medical men and
actors, he was increasingly unable to resist drinking, and a succession of
deaths among his closest associates caused him great pain. At times, however,
his alcoholism would seem to be in check, and among the most powerful works
composed during his last 6 years are the four Songs and Dances of Death.
His civil service career was made more precarious by his frequent 'illnesses'
and absences, and he was fortunate to obtain a transfer to a post (in the
Office of Government Control) where his music-loving superior treated him with
great leniency – in 1879 even allowing him to spend 3 months touring 12 cities
as a singer's accompanist.
The decline could
not be halted, however. In 1880 he was finally dismissed from government
service. Aware of his destitution, one group of friends organised a stipend
designed to support the completion of Khovanschina; another group
organised a similar fund to pay him to complete The Fair at Sorochyntsi.
However, neither work was completed (although Khovanschina, in
piano score with only two numbers uncomposed, came close to being finished).
In early 1881 a
desperate Mussorgsky declared to a friend that there was 'nothing left but
begging', and suffered four seizures in rapid succession. Though he found a
comfortable room in a good hospital – and for several weeks even appeared to be
rallying – the situation was hopeless. Repin painted
the famous red-nosed portrait in what were to be the last days of the
composer's life: a week after his 42nd birthday, he was dead. He was interred
at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery inSaint
Petersburg.
Mussorgsky, like
others of 'The Five', was perceived as extremist by the Emperor and much of his
court. This may have been the reason Tsar Alexander III personally crossed
off Boris Godunov from the list of proposed pieces for the
Imperial Opera in 1888.[25]
Works
Main
article: List of compositions by
Modest Mussorgsky
Mussorgsky's
works, while strikingly novel, are stylistically Romantic and
draw heavily on Russian musical themes. He has been the inspiration for many
Russian composers, including most notably Dmitri Shostakovich (in his late
symphonies) and Sergei Prokofiev (in his operas).
In 1868/9 he
composed the opera Boris Godunov, about the life of the
Russian tsar,
but it was rejected by the Mariinsky
Opera. Mussorgsky thus edited the work, making a final version in 1874. The
early version is considered darker and more concise than the later version, but
also more crude. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov re-orchestrated
the opera in 1896 and revised it in 1908. The opera has also been revised by
other composers, notably Shostakovich, who made two versions, one for film and
one for stage.
Khovanshchina, a more obscure opera, was unfinished and
unperformed when Mussorgsky died, but it was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and
received its premiere in 1886 in Saint
Petersburg. This opera, too, was revised by Shostakovich. The Fair at Sorochyntsi, another opera,
was left incomplete at his death but a dance excerpt, the Gopak, is frequently
performed.
Mussorgsky's most
imaginative and frequently performed work is the cycle of piano pieces describing
paintings in sound called Pictures at an Exhibition. This
composition, best known through an orchestral arrangement by Maurice
Ravel, was written in commemoration of his friend, the architect Viktor
Hartmann.
One of
Mussorgsky's most striking pieces is the single-movement orchestral work Night on Bald Mountain. The work enjoyed
broad popular recognition in the 1940s when it was featured, in tandem with Schubert's
'Ave Maria', in the Disney film Fantasia.
Among the
composer's other works are a number of songs, including three song cycles: The Nursery (1872), Sunless (1874) and Songs and Dances of Death (1877);
plusMephistopheles' Song of the Flea and many others. Important
early recordings of songs by Mussorgsky were made by tenor Vladimir
Rosing in the 1920s and 30s.[26] Other
recordings have been made by Boris
Christoff between 1951 and 1957 and by Sergei
Leiferkus in 1993.[27]
Criticism
Contemporary
opinions of Mussorgsky as a composer and person varied from positive to
ambiguous to negative. Mussorgsky's eventual supporters, Stasov and Balakirev,
initially registered strongly negative impressions of the composer. Stasov
wrote Balakirev, in an 1863 letter, "I have no use whatever for
Mussorgsky. All in him is flabby and dull. He is, I think, a perfect idiot.
Were he left to his own devices and no longer under your strict supervision, he
would soon run to seed as all the others have done. There is nothing in
him."
Balakirev agreed:
"Yes, Mussorgsky is little short of an idiot."
Mixed impressions
are recorded by Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, colleagues of Mussorgsky who,
unlike him, made their living as composers. Both praised his talent while
expressing disappointment with his technique. About Mussorgsky's scores
Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, "They were very defective, teeming with clumsy,
disconnected harmonies, shocking part-writing, amazingly illogical modulations
or intolerably long stretches without ever a modulation, and bad scoring.
...what is needed is an edition for practical and artistic purposes, suitable
for performances and for those who wish to admire Mussorgsky's genius, not to
study his idiosyncrasies and sins against art."
Rimsky-Korsakov's
own editions of Mussorgsky's works met with some criticism of their own.
Rimsky-Korsakov's student, Anatoly
Lyadov, found them to be lacking, writing "It is easy enough to
correct Mussorgsky's irregularities. The only trouble is that when this is
done, the character and originality of the music are done away with, and the
composer's individuality vanishes."
Tchaikovsky, in a
letter to his patroness Nadezhda
von Meck was also critical of Mussorgsky: "Mussorgsky you very
rightly call a hopeless case. In talent he is perhaps superior to all the
[other members of The Five], but his nature is narrow-minded, devoid of any
urge towards self-perfection, blindly believing in the ridiculous theories of
his circle and in his own genius. In addition, he has a certain base side to
his nature which likes coarseness, uncouthness, roughness.... He flaunts ...
his illiteracy, takes pride in his ignorance, mucks along anyhow, blindly
believing in the infallibility of his genius. Yet he has flashes of talent
which are, moreover, not devoid of originality."
Not all of the criticism
of Mussorgsky was negative. In a letter to Pauline
Viardot, Ivan Turgenev recorded his impressions of a
concert he attended in which he met Mussorgsky and heard two of his songs and
excerpts from Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina):
Today I was
invited to have dinner in old Petrov's house: I gave him a copy of your song,
which pleased him greatly [...] Petrov still admires you as enthusiastically as
in the past. In his drawing-room there's a bust of you, crowned with laurels,
which still bears a strong resemblance to you. I also met his wife (the
contralto) [Anna Vorobyova-Petrova, who created the role of Vanya in Glinka's A
Life for the Tsar]. She is sixty years old... After dinner she sang two quite
original and touching romances by Musorgsky (the author of Boris Godunov, who
was also present), in a voice that is still young and charming and has a very
expressive timbre. She sang them wonderfully! I was moved to tears, I assure
you. Then Mussorgsky played for us and sang, with a rather hoarse voice, some
excerpts from his opera and the other one that he is composing now – and the
music seemed to me very characteristic and interesting, upon my honour! Old
Petrov sang the role of the old profligate and vagabond monk [Varlaam's song
about Ivan the Terrible] – it was splendid! I am starting to believe that there
really is a future in all of this. Outwardly, Mussorgsky reminds one of Glinka
– it is just that his nose is all red (unfortunately, he is an alcoholic), he
has pale but beautiful eyes, and fine lips which are squeezed into a fat face
with flabby cheeks. I liked him: he is very natural and unaffected, and does
not put on any airs. He played us the introduction to his second opera
[Khovanshchina]. It is a bit Wagnerian, but full of feeling and beautiful.
Forward, forward! Russian artists!!
Western
perceptions of Mussorgsky changed with the European premiere of Boris
Godunov in 1908. Before the premiere, he was regarded as an eccentric
in the west. Critic Edward Dannreuther, wrote, in the 1905 edition
of The Oxford History of Music, "Mussorgsky, in his vocal
efforts, appears wilfully eccentric. His style impresses the Western ear as
barbarously ugly."
However, after
the premiere, views on Mussorgsky's music changed drastically. Gerald
Abraham, a musicologist, and an authority on Mussorgsky: "As a musical
translator of words and all that can be expressed in words, of psychological
states, and even physical movement, he is unsurpassed; as an absolute musician
he was hopelessly limited, with remarkably little ability to construct pure
music or even a purely musical texture."
References
Notes
- ^ Taruskin (1993: pp. xxx, 384)
- ^ Taruskin (1993: pp.
xxvii-xxviii)
- ^ Musorgskiy (1984: pp. 10-12)
- ^ Musorgskiy (1984: p. 44)
- ^ Musorgskiy (1984: p. 238)
- ^ a b Taruskin
(1993: p. xxviii)
- ^ Taruskin (1993: p. xxx)
- ^ Smirnitsky (1985: p. 300)
- ^ Taruskin (1993: pp. xxviii,
xxx)
- ^ Taruskin (1993: pp.
xxvii-xxxi)
- ^ Brown, David, Mussorgsky:
His Life and Works (
- ^ a b Brown,
4.
- ^ a b Brown,
5.
- ^ As quoted in Brown, 4
- ^ a b Brown,
6.
- ^ Brown, 8.
- ^ ed. E.Gordeyva, M.P.
Musorgsky v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov [Mussorgsky in the
recollections of contemporaries] (
- ^ Brown, 10.
- ^ Brown, 12–13.
- ^ Brown, 12.
- ^ Brown, 14.
- ^ Letter to Vladimir Stasov, 9
October 1875. As quoted in Rimsky-Korsakov, My Musical Life,
154–155, footnote 24.
- ^ a b Volkov,
p. 87.
- ^ Quoted in Sovietskaia
muzyka (Soviet Music), 9 (1980), 104. As quoted in
Volkov, p. 87.
- ^ Volkov (1995) 106–107.
- ^ Juynboll, Floris.
"Vladimir Rosing", The Record Collector Vol.
36 No. 3, July, August, September 1991. pg. 194–196
- ^ Kozinn, Allan, "The
New York Times essential library: classical music: a critic's guide to
the 100 most important recordings" (
Sources
- Brown, David, Mussorgsky: His
Life and Works (
- Musorgskiy, M., M. P.
Musorgskiy: Letters, Gordeyeva, Ye. (editor), 2nd edition,
- Smirnitsky, A., Russian-English
Dictionary,
- Taruskin, R., Musorgsky: Eight Essays
and an Epilogue,
- Volkov,
Solomon, tr. Bouis, Antonina W.,
External links
- Free scores by
Mussorgsky at the International Music
Score Library Project
- Free
scores by Modest Mussorgsky in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
- The Mutopia
Project has compositions by Modest
Mussorgsky
- Tableaux
d'une exposition Transcription pour contrebasse seule par Mauricio ROMERO
- Turgenev and
Mussorgsky (with music samples)
- Sunless score
for voice and orchestra, orchestration by Theo Verbey
πολύ γνωστό κομμάτι από την ταινία του Ντίσνεϋ, Φαντασία... ένα σκοτεινό Φαλακρό Βουνό... ενδιαφέρουσα πολύ η μουσική!!!
ΑπάντησηΔιαγραφήΌντως είναι πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα η μουσική. Μου έκανε τρομερή εντύπωση και γι' αυτό ασχολήθηκα μαζί του.
Διαγραφή