Modest Mussorgsky

Of all the members of the "Group of Five", Modest Mussorgsky was the most innovative and radical, the man whose Russian soul shines through in a body of work marked by incompleteness, but which nonetheless produced the opera Boris Godunov and such famous works as A Night on Bald Mountain and Pictures at an Exhibition. Born in Karevo, in the government of Pskov, on March 21, 1839, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a descendant of Prince Ryurik of Novgorod, founder of the Russian monarchy. From the age of six, he took his first piano lessons with his mother and quickly showed a certain aptitude, being able to play a concerto by John Field and pieces by Franz Liszt three years later. At ten, he was sent to St. Petersburg with his older brother Filaret, to study at the prestigious Petrischule, where he continued his training with Anton Gerke. After the publication of his first Polka porte-enseignement for piano at the age of twelve, the following year the young Moussorgsky entered the National Guard Cadet School, where his penchant for drinking was matched by his propensity for entertaining his classmates with dance improvisations. In addition to his interest in philosophy and history, he took part in the school choir and graduated in 1856 with the rank of lieutenant, to be incorporated into the Preobrazhensky Guard. His opera project, based on Victor Hugo's Han d'Islande, was the first in a list of unfinished works. At the military academy, he met Alexander Borodin, a doctor and aspiring composer like himself. His frequent visits to aristocratic salons also led him to meet Alexander Dargomyjski, the most important Russian composer since Mikhail Glinka, who invited him to enliven his evenings with his virtuoso playing. Over the next two years, Moussorgsky would come into contact with the elite of Russian cultural life and become part of the "Group of Five", alongside César Cui, Mili Balakirev, Nikolaï Rimski-Korsakov and his friend Borodine, brought together by the art critic Vladimir Stassov, who would be of invaluable help to Moussorgsky in choosing texts for his operas. For his part, Balakirev taught him harmony and composition, analyzing scores by Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann with him, so much so that Moussorgsky resigned from the army to become a composer in his own right. With a few pieces to his credit, such as La Petite étoile (1858), part of a cycle of eighteen melodies, he set himself the idea of adapting Gogol's St. John's Night into an opera, an idea that ended up getting lost between repeated crises in which mysticism mingled with alcoholism, which had become his daily routine. On his return from a visit to Moscow, which exacerbated his patriotic feelings, he managed to complete several piano pieces: Souvenir d'enfance, two Scherzi, the second of which was orchestrated and conducted by Anton Rubinstein, four-hand adaptations of Glinka, Balakirev and Beethoven, an Intermezzo in classical mode, an Impromptu passionné, Jeu d'enfants, and others since lost. For two years, he also worked on an opera inspired by Vladislav Ozerov's tragedy Oedipus in Athens, of which virtually nothing survives except the Temple Scene. A first Symphony in D major, begun in 1861, remains incomplete. In 1861, his family was ruined by the abolition of serfdom. For two years, the composer devoted himself to managing the estate, and found a job with the Office des Ingénieurs des Ponts et Chaussées, from which he was dismissed four years later, taking up another position as a civil servant in the water and forestry administration. At the same time, in 1863, he began writing the opera Salammbô after Gustave Flaubert, only to abandon it after three years, nevertheless recycling certain musical parts in Boris Godounov. Sharing a St. Petersburg apartment with five other libertarian-minded artists, he embraced the cause of writer Nikolai Gravilovich Chernyschevsky, calling for realistic, popular art. On the death of his mother in 1865, he returned to live with his brother, and in his songs Hopak and Darling Savishna, he depicts this sentiment in his own distinctive style of recited song. Other well-known melodies include Nuit after Pushkin and Désir after Heine. In 1867, Mussorgsky completed the symphonic poem A Night on Bald Mountain, which Balakirev refused to conduct, but another version of which, orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov, was premiered on October 27, 1886, before entering popular culture for a variety of uses. In 1868, he again put his declamatory style to good use in the opera Mariage after Gogol, which he abandoned after writing the first act to concentrate on his great work Boris Godunov, after Pushkin and Karamzin's History of the Russian State. This time, he took his project to its conclusion, alongside the unfinished Babyl and the cycle of seven Childish melodies. Unaffected by any German or Italian influence, and detached from the codes of opera, Moussorgsky's first version was rejected by the Mariinsky Theatre in 1870, on the grounds that it had no important female roles and was too "modern" in style. The composer then worked on a new version in line with the wishes of the reading committee, adding the character of Marina and a third act set in Poland. After a second rejection in 1872, the opera was finally accepted through the influence of an influential patron and premiered on February 8, 1874. Other versions followed, by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1896 and 1908, and by Shostakovich in 1940. After the collective project Madla, an aborted opera-ballet, Mussorgsky worked on the political opera La Khovanchtchina, inspired by the Moscow revolts of 1682. After eight years of reworking and re-orchestrating, it was revised by Rimsky-Korsakov, who brought out a final version in 1883, premiered by an amateur troupe in Kamonov Hall on February 21, 1886. With the "Group of Five" scattered, Mussorgsky collaborated with the poet Arsène Glolenischev-Kutuzov on the song cycles Sans soleil (1874) and Chants et danses de la mort (1875-1877). In 1874, he composed the four-hand piano score Pictures at an Exhibition, in memory of his architect friend Viktor Hartmann, who had died in 1873. The ten pieces, interspersed with "promenades", were orchestrated by Maurice Ravel in 1922. The same year, he began work on a popular opera, Sorochinsky's Fair, based on Gogol, which he abandoned six years later. The death in 1878 of the bass Ossip Petrov, who had taken part in the creation of Boris Godunov and to whom he had predestined the principal role, undoubtedly discouraged the composer. In any case, Moussorgsky eventually resigned from the civil service to earn his living as a pianist, but ended up teaching at the singing school of the singer Daria Leonova, with whom he shared a three-month tour of the Ukraine and Crimea. On his return, he was weakened by epileptic seizures and delirium tremens. Admitted to the military hospital in St. Petersburg, he died there on March 28, 1881 at the age of 42.

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