Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Mussorgsky (* March 21, 1839, Karevo Estate; † March 28, 1881, St. Petersburg) is considered an innovator of Russian Romantic music. As a child, he received piano lessons, then briefly pursued a military career, which he concluded in 1858 as a Guards officer in St. Petersburg. Subsequently, he largely self-taught himself music. From the 1860s onwards, he had to work as a concert pianist due to financial reasons and also took a position as a civil servant. As he was denied proper recognition as a composer during his lifetime, he died impoverished and suffering from alcoholism in 1881. Modest Mussorgsky's oeuvre is comparatively small, yet it includes some of the most important compositions of Russian Romanticism, foremost among them his only opera, "Boris Godunov" (1868/69), based on a story by Alexander Pushkin, which he revised several times in the following years. By then, Mussorgsky was already a member of "The Mighty Handful," a group of composers including Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, César Cui, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, whose goal was to reform Russian art music by incorporating folk music, the unique characteristics of the language, realistic subjects, and national themes. As a self-taught musician, Mussorgsky took unconventional paths, combining realistic elements with ritualistic ones, and humorous with psychological aspects in his opera. Other well-known works include the symphonic poem "Night on Bald Mountain" (1867) and the piano cycle "Pictures at an Exhibition" (1864), which was inspired by a memorial exhibition for the architect and painter Viktor Hartmann. Many of Mussorgsky's works remained fragments, such as the operas "The Marriage" (1868), "Khovanshchina" (1873–80), or "Sorochyntsi Fair" (1876–78). He also created several cycles of piano songs, such as "The Nursery" (1868–72), "Sunless" (1874), and "Songs and Dances of Death" (1874–77).