Download Mussorgsky, Modest Petrovich (1839

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Mussorgsky, Modest Petrovich (1839-1881)
- Mussorgsky is considered one of the most original and influential
of the 19th-century Russian nationalist composers.
-Mussorgsky was educated privately and at a military
academy in Saint Petersburg.
-When he was 18 years old, he met Russian nationalist
composer Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky, through whom
Mussorgsky joined the circle of Russian nationalist composers
now known as The Mighty Fistful (The Five).
-In 1858 he resigned from military service to devote himself to music;
-After 1863 he supported himself as a government clerk.
-Except for some instruction in musical form with Balakirev,
also a member of The Mighty Fistful, Mussorgsky
was self-taught in composition.
-His bold, unorthodox harmonies, based on the scales of Russian
folk music, influenced later non-Russian composers.
-His songs, among the finest of the 19th century, reflect his desire
to reproduce the rhythms and contours of Russian speech.
-His masterpiece, the opera Boris Godunov (1868) is based on
a drama by Pushkin.
-It is a monumental work, unusual in its musical and dramatic
use of the chorus and admired for its psychological insight and
its evocation of the Russian people.
-In 1896 it was reorchestrated and in places reharmonized by
another member of The Mighty Fistful, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov
and is best known in this version.
-Mussorgsky's other works include:
---the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition
(1874, orchestrated 1922 by French composer Maurice Ravel);
---the symphonic poem Saint John's Night on the Bare Mountain
(1867; also known as Night on Bald Mountain);
---the song cycles The Nursery (1872);
---Songs and Dances of Death (1877);
---the unfinished operas Khovanshchina;
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completed by Rimsky-Korsakov, and
---The Fair at Sorochinsk, completed by Caesar Cui, another member of The Five.
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