Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky was born in Karevo, Russia, on March 21, 1839. When he was thirteen he entered the cadet school of the Imperial Guard in St. Petersburg, from which he was graduated to join the Guard regiment. In 1857 he met and befriended several important Russian musicians (including Balakirev and Stassov) under whose stimulus he decided to leave the army and become a composer. Until now his musical education had been sporadic, having consisted of little more than some piano lessons with his mother and a private teacher. He now began an intensive period of study with Balakirev, under whose guidance he completed a Scherzo for orchestra which was performed in St. Petersburg in 1860, as well as some piano music and the fragments of a symphony. Associating himself with Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, and Cui he now became a passionate advocate of musical nationalism, becoming the fifth member of a new school of Russian music henceforth identified as “The Mighty Five” or “The Russian Five.” In 1863, with serfdom abolished in Russia, he lost the outside financial resources he had thus far enjoyed as the son of a landowner. To support himself he worked for four years as a clerk in the Ministry of Communications; in 1869 he found employment in the forestry department. During this period music had to be relegated to the position of an avocation, but composition was not abandoned. He completed the first of his masterworks, the orchestral tone poem, A Night on the Bald Mountain, in 1866. A lifelong victim of nervous disorders, melancholia and subsequently of alcoholism, his health soon began to deteriorate alarmingly; but despite this fact he was able to complete several works of crowning significance in 1874 including his folk opera, Boris Godunov, and his Pictures at an Exhibition, for piano. After 1874 his moral and physical disintegration became complete; towards the last months of his life he gave indications of losing his mind. He died in St. Petersburg on March 28, 1881.
As one of the most forceful and original members of the “Russian Five” Mussorgsky’s greatest works certainly do not lend themselves to popular distribution. His writing is too individual in its melodic and harmonic construction; and his works show too great a tendency towards musical realism to make for palatable digest. However, several of the folk dances in his operas are strikingly effective for their rhythmic pulse and national colors and are by no means as elusive in their appeal as the rest of his production.
Mussorgsky’s masterwork is his mighty folk opera, Boris Godunov, where we encounter one such delightful dance episode, the Polonaise. Boris Godunov, libretto by the composer based on a Pushkin drama, traces the career of the Czar from the years 1598 to 1605, from his coronation to his insanity and death. The Polonaise occurs in the first scene of the third act. At the palace of a Polish landowner, handsomely costumed guests perform this festive courtly dance in the adjoining garden. The première of Boris Godunov took place in St. Petersburg on February 8, 1874.
Two orchestral dances can also be found in another of Mussorgky’s folk operas, The Fair at Sorochinsk, which was not introduced until October 26, 1917, in St. Petersburg. The libretto was by the composer based on Gogol’s story, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. Tcherevik, a peasant, wants his daughter to marry Pritzko, whereas the peasant’s wife is partial to the pastor’s son. However, when the pastor’s son compromises the peasant’s wife she realizes that Pritzko is, after all, the right man for her daughter. In the third act of this opera comes the lively Hopak, or Gopak, a folk dance with two beats to a measure.
Folk dances of a completely different nature—more oriental and exotic than the previously discussed Russian variety—will be found in Khovanschina, a musical drama with libretto by the composer and Stassov; this opera was first given, in an amateur performance, in St. Petersburg on February 21, 1886. Here the setting is Moscow during the reign of Peter the Great, and the plot revolves around the efforts of a band of radicals known as the Streltsy who try to overthrow the Czar. Prince Ivan Khovantsky, who is in league with the Streltsy, is murdered by assassins, and the insurrection is suppressed. But before the leaders of the Streltsy can destroy themselves they are given an official pardon by the Czar. A high moment in this opera comes with the Dances of the Persian Slaves, which takes place in the first scene of the fourth act. At the country house of Khovantsky, the Prince is being entertained by an elaborate spectacle, the main attraction of which is the sinuous, Corybantic dancing of the Persian slaves.
Almost as popular as these Persian dances are the Prelude to the first act and an entr’acte between the first and second scenes from this opera; these two episodes for orchestra are highly atmospheric, graphic in the pictures of Russian landscapes. The first act Prelude has been named by the composer, Dawn on the Moskava River. This is a subtle tone picture made up of a folk melody and five variations. The entr’acte offers another kind of landscape, this time a bleak one describing the vast, lonely plains of Siberia.