The Classical Music Book

207

See also: Dvorˇ ák’s Symphony No. 9 212–215 ■ Le Sacre du printemps 246–251 ■

Romeo and Juliet 272 ■ Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony 274–279

T

he Russian composer

Modest Mussorgsky’s

Pictures at an Exhibition

is a piano suite in 10 movements.

Each movement was inspired by

the work of fellow Russian Viktor

Hartmann, an architect and artist.

Mussorgsky belonged to a

generation of composers who, in

the 1860s, gave Russian music

its first distinctive voice. He was

part of a group nicknamed the

“Five,” also known as the “Mighty

Handful,” who sought to create

music without being confined by

western European conventions.

Besides Mussorgsky, the “Five”

were Mily Balakirev (1837–1910),

the group’s initial guiding spirit;

Aleksandr Borodin (1833–1887), a

scientist as well as a musician;

César Cui, best known as a critic;

and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov,

who played a key role in mentoring

a new generation of composers,

including Aleksandr Scriabin

and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Pictures at an Exhibition

was composed shortly after the

premiere of Mussorgsky’s opera

Boris Godunov in January 1874,

which marked the public high point

of his career. The piano suite was

not performed in the composer's

lifetime, but its intensity and

complexity, and distinctly Russian

subject matter, helped to achieve

the ultimate ambition of the “Five”

to give Russian music its own

unmistakable voice. ■

NATIONALISM 1830 –1920

The early, alcohol-induced death

of Mussorgsky, painted here by Ilya

Repi in 1881, the year that he died, left

Rimsky-Korsakov and other composers

to finish or revise his work.

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Nationalism in 19th-

century Russian music

BEFORE

1815 In St. Petersburg,

Venetian-born Catterino Cavos

composes Ivan Susanin, the

first opera about Russian

characters, based on Russian

history, and incorporating

Russian folk music.

1836 Mikhail Glinka’s A Life

for the Tsar has its premiere

in St. Petersburg. It is the first

all-sung opera by a native

Russian composer.

AFTER

1896 Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

undertakes the first of his

revisions of Mussorgsky’s

opera Boris Godunov. For

decades, these remain the

most-performed versions.

1922 French composer

Maurice Ravel produces an

orchestrated version of

Pictures at an Exhibition.

MUSSORGSKY

TYPIFIES THE GENIUS

OF RUSSIA

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION ( 1874 ),

MODEST PETROVICH MUSSORGSKY

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