He left us relatively few completed works but, from the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition via the lush orchestral textures of the tone poem In the Steppes of Central Asia to the dramatic opera Boris Godunov, Modest Mussorgsky's music is often captivating, exciting - and fascinatingly removed from the music of the Western classical tradition.
With its audacious harmonies and textures and a distinctly Russian sound, Mussorgsky's music has similarities with that of the other members of the so-called 'Mighty Handful'. This group of nationalist Russian composers also included Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Mily Balakirev.
They all aimed at a self-determining Russian sound, drawing on national folk music and more. See, for example, the 'Hut on Fowl's Legs' section from Pictures at an Exhibition, which draws on the Slavic myth of Baba Yaga. It's hard to imagine a more Russian-sounding classical music.
These composers saw themselves at some distance from Tchaikovsky, whose music - though it had strong Russian elements - owed a little more to the Western European tradition of Mozart, Schubert and others.
What does Mussorgsky's music sound like?
Audacious harmonies
Modest Mussorgsky composed at the piano, and often discovered striking and unorthodox harmonies through extemporising. In this way, he hit upon the remarkable bell harmonies which open the coronation scene of his opera Boris Godunov.
Language of the heart
Mussorgsky’s expressiveness derives to a degree from Schumann’s harmonic language. Yet one of his greatest achievements was the way his music reflects the fractured, multi-dimensional nature of the individual human soul or identity – whether the mighty yet tormented Tsar Boris or a humble peasant woman.
Compare and contrast
Particularly when Mussorgsky’s music is without the thread of a vocal line, an idea is often not so much answered as complemented or contrasted with another idea. ‘Dawn on the Moscow River’ which opens Khovanshchina offers a brilliant depiction through a mosaic of musical ideas – a technique Stravinsky, for instance, was to push further in his music from Petrushka onwards.
That martial sound
An exception to the above technique, perhaps not surprisingly for a former guards officer, is when Mussorgsky composes a march. For these, he structures the thematic material more conventionally: excellent examples include the festive march from Mlada, and the hair-raising march of the Streltsy in his incomplete opera Khovanshchina.
Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina
