Who is modest mussorgsky

By this time, Mussorgsky had freed himself from the influence of Balakirev and was largely teaching himself. Decisive developments were occurring in his artistic life, however. A few months after abandoning Zhenitba , the year-old Mussorgsky was encouraged to write an opera on the story of Boris Godunov. He completed the large-scale score the following year while living with friends and working for the Forestry Department.

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 , and three excerpts were staged at the Mariinsky Theatre in It is often asserted that in 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 , 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.

From this peak a pattern of decline becomes increasingly apparent. Already the Balakirev circle was disintegrating. Mussorgsky was especially bitter about this. 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.

He and his fellow drinkers idealized their alcoholism, perhaps seeing it as ethical and aesthetic opposition. This bravado, however, led to little more than isolation and eventual self-destruction. For a time Mussorgsky was able to maintain his creative output: his compositions from include Sunless , the Khovanschina 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.

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.

The decline could not be halted, however. In 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.

Though he found a comfortable room in a good hospital — and for several weeks even appeared to be rallying — the situation was hopeless. In —37, in connection with the reconstruction and redevelopment of the so-called Necropolis of Masters of Arts, the square in front of the Lavra was substantially extended and the border line of the Tikhvin cemetery was accordingly moved. The burial place of Mussorgsky is now a bus stop. Mussorgsky thus edited the work, making a final version in 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 and revised it in The opera has also been revised by other composers, notably Shostakovich, who made two versions, one for film and one for stage. The opera Khovanshchina was unfinished and unperformed when Mussorgsky died, but it was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and received its premiere in 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.

This composition, best known through an orchestral arrangement by Maurice Ravel, was written in commemoration of his friend, the architect Viktor Hartmann. Important early recordings of songs by Mussorgsky were made by tenor Vladimir Rosing in the s and 30s. Other recordings have been made by Boris Christoff between and and by Sergei Leiferkus in Contemporary opinions of Mussorgsky as a composer and person varied from positive to ambiguous to negative.

All in him is flabby and dull. He is, I think, a perfect idiot. Two of his most notable works include:. After a rather turbulent life, and under extremely unfortunate circumstances, the composer passed away in For Mussorgsky, his musical orientation began fairly early when he was six, and he started piano training under his mother.

There, Mussorgsky learned piano alongside his general education. Here, he progressed from a cadet to gaining a commission in the elite imperial regiment Preobrazhensky Regiment and met Alexander Borodin, a medical officer in the army, who would himself go on to become a famous composer.

In , Mussorgsky met Russian composer Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky through a fellow soldier in the regiment. It was at this time and place that Modest Mussorgsky discovered the music of Mikhail Glinka. Also, at one of the many soirees of composer Dargomyzhsky, Mussorgsky met Mily Balakirev, who imparted advanced music lessons to the upcoming artist.

This followed the composer taking up a civil servant job in , at the Ministry of Communications. The same year he met the year-old scientist Alexander Borodin, who was pursuing a parallel composing career in his spare time.

Mussorgsky decided to continue alone. He took a low-paid job as a clerk and began formulating his own unique musical style based on the rhythms of the Russian language. But from he went into creative overdrive. The first result was his orchestral masterpiece, A Night on the Bare Mountain. For music of this period only that of Berlioz rivals its sheer audacity and uncompromising invention.

But it proved too much for Balakirev, who refused point blank to conduct it. Undeterred, Mussorgsky now set to work on two back-to-back operatic projects. At last Mussorgsky had found the ideal subject with which to explore the Russian psyche through his music.

Mussorgsky never mastered the art of organic development, which is crucial to large-scale musical forms.