Modest Mussorgsky
The Russian composer Modest Petrowitsch Mussorgsky (1839-1881) received his first piano lessons in St. Petersburg in 1849; in 1852 he was admitted to the local cadets’ school and military corps, where became an officer from 1856-58, before his interests turned to music. Encouraged by Milij Balakirew, he mostly taught himself; in 1857, still in St. Petersburg, he met Aleksandr Dargomyschskij and Zesar Kjui. After losing his fortune, he accepted the post of a junior civil servant and also began to perform as concert pianist. He died, impoverished and lonely, of alcoholism.
Unlike his very academically minded contemporaries Anton Rubinstein and Peter I. Tschaikowsky, Mussorgsky broke the seemingly firmly established conventions in order to re-interpret in his music real human and social aspects of life. After the Manifesto of the Powerful Few, he tried to revive Russian music through the medium of folk song, at the same time going way beyond the folkloristic tendencies of the National Russian School. Thus, in his main work, the opera “Boris Godunow”, he combines elemental ritual (such as the people’s chorus of appeal) and relentless realism with a subtlety which is at times reminiscent of Shakespeare (for example in the final song of the Lunatic). This he achieves by re-interpreting and transforming both language and the highly dramatic psychological situations into the rigorous realism of his music.
His works have often remained fragments and were partly completed by friends, especially by Nikolaj Rimskij-Korsakow.
Unlike his very academically minded contemporaries Anton Rubinstein and Peter I. Tschaikowsky, Mussorgsky broke the seemingly firmly established conventions in order to re-interpret in his music real human and social aspects of life. After the Manifesto of the Powerful Few, he tried to revive Russian music through the medium of folk song, at the same time going way beyond the folkloristic tendencies of the National Russian School. Thus, in his main work, the opera “Boris Godunow”, he combines elemental ritual (such as the people’s chorus of appeal) and relentless realism with a subtlety which is at times reminiscent of Shakespeare (for example in the final song of the Lunatic). This he achieves by re-interpreting and transforming both language and the highly dramatic psychological situations into the rigorous realism of his music.
His works have often remained fragments and were partly completed by friends, especially by Nikolaj Rimskij-Korsakow.