MODEST PETROVICH MUSSORGSKY Russian Composer (1839-1881) Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky free midi download

MODEST PETROVICH MUSSORGSKY
21^st March 1839 --- 28^th March 1881

Modest Mussorgsky also spelled MUSORGSKY, or MOUSSORGSKY (born 1839, Karevo, Russia--died 1881, St. Petersburg), Russian composer
noted particularly for his opera Boris Godunov (final version first performed 1874), his songs, and his piano piece Pictures from an
Exhibition (1874).

Mussorgsky the son of a landowner but had peasant blood, his father's grandmother having been a serf. According to his autobiographical
sketch, written in 1881, Mussorgsky claimed that he learned about Russian fairy tales from his nurse. This early familiarity with the spirit
of the people, with the way they lived, lent the first and greatest impetus to my musical improvisations. His mother, herself an excellent
pianist, gave Modest his first piano lessons, and at seven he could play some of Franz Liszt's simpler pieces. In August 1849 his father took
Modest and his other musical son Filaret to St.Petersburg, where Modest attended the Peter-Paul School in preparation for a military career.
At the same time, mindful of Modest's musical bent, their father entrusted the boys to Anton Gerke, future professor of music at the St.
Petersburg Conservatory.

In 1852 Mussorgsky entered the School for Cadets of the Guard. There, in his first year he composed his Podpraporshchik ( Porte-Enseigne
Polka), published at his father's expense. Although not the most industrious of students, he gave proof of tremendous curiosity and wide
ranging intellectual interests.

In 1856, by now a lieutenant Mussorgsky joined the Preobrazhensky Guards one of Russia's most aristocratic Steveniments, where he made
the acquaintance of several music-loving officers who were habitu�s of the Italian theatre. During this same period he came to know
Aleksandr Borodin, fellow officer who was to become another important Russian composer. Borodin has provided a very vivid picture of the
musician.

There was something absolutely boyish about Mussorgsky, he looked like a real second-lieutenant of the picture books a touch of foppery
unmistakable but kept well within bounds. His courtesy and good breeding were exemplary. All the women fell in love with him. That same
evening we were invited to dine with the head surgeon of the hospital Mussorgsky sat down to the piano and played gently and graciously
with occasional affected movements of the hands, while his listeners murmured, "charming! delicious!"

During the winter of 1856, Stevenimental comrade introduced Mussorgsky to the home of the Russian composer Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky.
At one of the musicales there Mussorgsky discovered the music of the seminal Russian composer Mikhail Glinka and this quickened his own
Russophile inclinations. Three years later, in June 1859, he saw the Moscow Kremlin for the first time, an important experience that
represented his first physical communion with Russian history. Through Dargomyzhsky, Mussorgsky met another composer, Mily Balakirev
who became his teacher. Since the death of their father (in 1853), the Mussorgsky brothers had seen their poorly administered patrimony
decrease substantially. With the freeing of the serfs in 1861, it vanished. Mussorgsky, having decided to devote himself to music, had quit
the army three years earlier and since 1863 had been working as a civil servant in the Ministry of Communications. His distressing financial
troubles date from that time, and he had to seek the help of moneylenders.

Mussorgsky achieved artistic maturity in 1866 with a series of remarkable songs about ordinary people such as "Darling Savishna," "Hopak"
and "The Seminarist," and an even larger series appeared the following year. Another work dating from this time is the symphonic poem
Ivanova noch na Lysoy gore (1867, Night on Bald Mountain). In 1868 he reached the height of his conceptual powers in composition with
the first song of his incomparable cycle Detskaya (The Nursery) and a setting of the first act of Nikolay Gogol's Zhenitba (The Marriage).

In 1869 he began his great work Boris Godunov to his own libretto based on the drama by Aleksandr Pushkin. The first version, completed
in December 1869, was rejected by the advisory committee of the imperial theatres on account of the plot's lack of a love interest. In
response, the composer subjected the opera to a thorough revision and in 1872 put the finishing touches to the second version, adding the
roles of Marina and Rangoni as well as several new episodes. The first production of Boris took place on Feb. 8, 1874, at St. Petersburg and
was a success.

In spite of the work's success, Mussorgsky was not happy. His solitude and bitter ordeal now commenced. Having once loved a cousin who
died prematurely and having remained faithful to this memory the composer never married. In 1865, after the death of his mother, he lived
with his brother, then shared a small flat with the Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov until 1872 when his colleague married. Left
very much alone, Mussorgsky began to drink to excess, although the composition of the opera Khovanshchina perhaps offered some
distraction (left unfinished at his death, this opera was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov). Mussorgsky then found a companion in the person
of a distant relative, Arseny Golenishchev Kutuzov. This impoverished 25 year old poet inspired Mussorgsky's two cycles of melancholy
melodies Bez solntsa (Sunless) and Pesni i plyaski smerti (Songs and Dances of Death). At that time Mussorgsky was haunted by the spectre
of death he himself had only seven more years to live. The death of another friend the painter Victor Hartmann inspired Mussorgsky to write
the piano suite Kartinki s vystavki (Pictures from an Exhibition orchestrated in 1922 by the French composer Maurice Ravel).

The last few years of Mussorgsky's life were dominated by his Alcoholism and by a solitude made all the more painful by the total neglect of
his friends, who, Balakirev included, treated him like an outcast. Nonetheless, the composer began his opera Sorochinskaya yarmarka
(unfinished, Sorochintsy Fair), inspired by Gogol's tale. As the accompanist of an aging singer, Darya Leonova, Mussorgsky departed on a
lengthy concert tour of southern Russia and the Crimea. On his return he tried teaching at a small school of music in St. Petersburg.

On Feb. 24, 1881, three successive attacks of alcoholic epilepsy laid him low. His friends took him to a hospital where for a time his health
improved sufficiently for one of the leading Russian artists of the day, Ilya Repin, to paint a famous portrait of him. Mussorgsky's health
was irreparably damaged, however, and he died within a month.

Mussorgsky's importance and influence on later composers are quite out of proportion to his relatively small output. Few composers were
less derivative, or evolved so original and bold a style. The 65 songs he composed, many to his own texts, describe scenes of Russian life
with great vividness and insight and realistically reproduce the inflections of the spoken Russian language. Mussorgsky's operas Boris
Godunov and to a lesser extent Khovanshchina display his dramatic technique of setting sharply characterized individuals against the
background of country and people. His power of musical portrayal, his strong characterizations, and the importance he assigned to the role
of the chorus all expressions of his anti-Romantic convictions establish Boris Godunov as a masterpiece. From a technical standpoint
Mussorgsky's unorthodox use of tonality and harmony and his method of fusing arioso and recitative provide Boris Godunov with a dramatic
intensity that he failed to recapture in his subsequent operas.

Shortly after Mussorgsky's death, his original harmonic and instrumental style was unjustifiably criticized. Subsequently, Rimsky-Korsakov
with the well meaning intention of purging Mussorgsky's works of what he considered to be their harmonic eccentricities and instrumental
weaknesses, edited and "corrected" almost the entire output of the deceased composer, Rimsky-Korsakov's widely performed edition of
Boris Godunov is the best known of these works. From about 1908, however, after the production of Rimsky-Korsakov's version of Boris
Godunov at the Paris Opera, there was a growing demand for the original versions of Mussorgsky's works, which were made available from
the beginning of 1928 in a collected edition edited by Paul Lamm. This edition displayed Mussorgsky's original orchestration for Boris
Godunov, which is as stark and economical as his unorthodox harmony.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated on 2022
By Steven Ritchie

And now for the Music

New (3789)"Une Larme". Sequenced by Steven Ritchie.

New (3788)"Intro to Khovanshchina". Sequencer Unknown.

(2709)"Sonata in C major". Sequenced by Jens.G.Soltau.

Thanks to Sergio Vila, for the following music below. Email (viladesign@bol.com.br)
(1766)"The complete piano version of Pictures at an exhibition". Sequenced by Sergio Vila.

Thanks to George Pollen for the music below. His website address is on my Bookmark Page.
(834)"Fair at Sorochinsk". Sequenced by George Pollen.

(175)"Byblo (Pictures at an Exhibition, (Info by Craig.A.Eddy and William Shockley)". Sequenced by Robert Finley.

(504)"Tableaux d'une exposition, Promenade No.1, Gnomus No.2, Il Vecchio castello". Sequenced by Katsuhiro Oguri.

(505)"Tableaux d'une exposition, Promenade No.3, Tuileries, No.4, Bydlo, Promenade, No.5, Ballet, No.6". Sequenced by Katsuhiro Oguri.

(506)"Tableaux d'une exposition, Promenade,No.7, Limoges Le marche, No.8, Sepulcrum romanum". Sequenced by Katsuhiro Oguri.

(507)"Tableaux d'une exposition, No.9, La cabane sur des pattes de poule, No.10, La porte des Bohatyrs de Kiev". Sequenced by Katsuhiro Oguri.

(895)"Night on a bare Mountain". Sequencer unknown.

If you done any Classical pieces of say for example, Delius, mozart, and so on etc,
please email them to the classical music site with details to
"classical   (@)    ntlworld.com" written this way to stop spammers
just remove spaces and brackets for email address, thank you.

Visitors to this page --

Back to Classical Midi Main Menu click "HERE"


© 1997 - 2022 by Webmaster 2000. Please note all MIDI pieces are © by the sequencer, so please email them if you wish to use them on your Non-Commercial site.
You have my permission to use my own sequenced pieces, so long as due credit is given and a link back to this site..