The music of Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, author of the masterpieces Boris Godunov, Khovanshchina, and Sorochinskaya Yarmarka (The Fair at Sorochyntsi), strikes with dramatic truth and simplicity of presentation. His work is characterised by ingenuity and innovative techniques combined with folk traditions. However, due to alcohol addiction, the composer failed to realise his full potential.
Modest’s first music teacher was his mother Yulia Mussorgskaya. Not yet knowing the notes, the boy reaches for the piano to play his nanny’s songs and fairy tales.
Perhaps the child was drawn to the melody, or perhaps it was the voice of the blood. After all, his paternal grandfather, Pyotr Mussorgsky, had once committed a mésalliance by marrying a serf peasant woman [1]. Later, when asked why he was so attracted to scenes from folk life, the composer joked that it was his grandmother’s fault. His first professional piano teacher was Anton Gerke, a distinguished pianist and professor at the Saint-Petersburg Conservatory [1].
However, his parents chose a military career for their son. In the Preobrazhensky Regiment, Modest was a celebrity: the soul of the company, he brilliantly improvised on the piano and hilariously acted out scenes from popular vaudevilles, using his velvety baritone to portray all characters at once. In his needlepoint uniform, the graceful Mussorgsky gave the impression of a refined, elegant socialite. He spoke a little through his teeth, as was the custom among the Guards [3]. He was fashionable, as we would say nowadays, and not a single cocktail party of his colleagues was complete without him.
His first serious compositions, the Scherzo in B-flat major and the chorus from the tragedy Oedipus the King, were performed in St. Petersburg [5]. Mussorgsky wrote romances and orchestral pieces, among them St. John’s Night on the Bare Mountain. One festive gathering brought Modest to 26 Mokhovaya Street, where he made a new friend, Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov, and joined the circle known as ‘The Mighty Handful’ or ‘The Five’, where music was not merely a pastime but a search for new meanings [2].
However, his fellow composers behaved unfairly towards Mussorgsky. They considered his unusual creative discoveries to be a lack of education—unfortunate blunders that needed to be corrected. His energetic mentor Mily Balakirev once said that Mussorgsky had ‘weak brains’ [4]. Even Stasov thought that Modest should write something satirical. His fellow musician César Cui would pick on every bar of his innovative operas. Even Pyotr Tchaikovsky, in letters to his brother Modest Tchaikovsky, referred to Mussorgsky’s work as ‘rubbish music that should be sent to hell’ [5]. Close friend Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov would later describe the unfinished opera Khovanshchina as ‘cacophony, illiteracy, and filth’ [5]. This criticism came during Mussorgsky’s later years when he struggled to cope with alcoholism and personal tragedy. Perhaps his colleagues were offended by the fact that the ‘star of the social drawing rooms’, a former military man and self-taught composer, dared to challenge the sacred institution of opera itself.
Everyone dissuaded him from leaving the elite regiment, since most of his colleagues in ‘The Mighty Handful’ balanced creativity with their main professions. After leaving the military, Mussorgsky had more time to compose but was short on money [1]. The abolition of serfdom left the nobility without their traditional sources of income. To survive, Modest enters civil service as a low-ranking clerk. The routine ‘strangled’ him, and he was a young man from a good family who fell into bad company. Mussorgsky rented a flat near Kokushkin Bridge and shared accommodations with five fellow clerks. At the time, it was a rough part of the city near Sennaya Square, filled with noise and taverns [5].
His older brother, Filaret Mussorgsky, rescued him from this environment, though only temporarily, as the brothers lacked emotional closeness. Modest was a convinced bachelor immersed in art, while Filaret was devoted to his family. Mussorgsky’s contemporary composer Nikolai Kompaneisky once wrote:
Gifted by nature not only with musical talent but with great intelligence and savvy, he always shunned systematic study. The life of art served as a musical school for him. He was lazy and careless as a Russian muzhik, never thinking about tomorrow [4].
In 1869, Mussorgsky was employed as a clerk in the Forest Department. His alcoholism nearly cost him his position, but he was protected by a sympathetic superior [3]. Nevertheless, his addiction did not prevent him from creating the chamber opera Marriage based on Nikolai Gogol’s play, the vocal cycle The Nursery, and presenting Boris Godunov, based on Alexander Pushkin’s tragedy, at the Mariinsky Theatre. He also began working on Khovanshchina, a musical journey through peasant folklore [2].
None of the ‘Kuchkaists’ had ever attempted a musical canvas portraying real, harsh, everyday Russians rather than fairy-tale peasants. At 30, Mussorgsky rented a flat with the equally bachelor, Rimsky-Korsakov. One wrote Boris Godunov, and the other wrote The Maid of Pskov. Mussorgsky, a native of Pskov, often helped his friend with advice [3].
Nikolai Andreyevich later recalled that it was an unprecedented cohabitation of two composers [4]. Mussorgsky used the piano until lunchtime, then went to his clerical job. In the afternoon, Rimsky-Korsakov composed music. Stasov fondly recalled how he would arrive early to wake the sleeping opera composers, help them dress, and serve them tea with Swiss cheese. Then, the feast of creativity would begin, and the composers would perform their latest works for each other [4].
Mussorgsky took the libretto and score of Boris Godunov to the opera committee of the Imperial Theatre Directorate [1]. He waited months for a reply, which ultimately was a rejection. The official reason was the absence of a prominent female role or a love story. The opera might never have been staged had it not been for the persistence of celebrated actress Yuliya Platonova [3]. An admirer of Modest Petrovich’s talent, she refused to renew her contract unless Boris Godunov was staged for her benefit performance.
The success of this project was overwhelming. The audience called the composer for an encore twenty times. Yet the academic establishment poured scorn on it in print, calling the opera ‘a cacophony in five acts’, ‘a real abomination’ and ‘the music of bedlam’ [1]. In his pursuit of authentic historical expression, Mussorgsky glimpsed the future of music. Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, and Igor Stravinsky would later cite him as a key influence, as would French impressionists Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy [2].
In 1873, Mussorgsky’s close friend Viktor Hartmann died. It was he who affectionately nicknamed Modest ‘The Holy Fool Mussorgian’. Composer Alexander Borodin recollects:
In Pavlovsk, Mussorgsky was seen quite drunk (he made a scene; the matter went to the police). I was told that he had already drunk himself to hell and was dreaming of all sorts of rubbish [4].
A posthumous exhibition of Hartmann’s works in 1874 inspired Modest to compose one of the most significant piano cycles in world music: Pictures at an Exhibition [2].
Stasov went abroad. Mussorgsky’s close friend, Count Pyotr Golenishchev-Kutuzov, who was the subject of rumours regarding his sexuality married Rimsky-Korsakov’s sister. Mussorgsky, ever private about his own intimate life, moved between rented flats and lived for years with acquaintances, poverty, and grief. He distanced himself from his musical peers and gave up his job in the government.
In 1877, Mussorgsky moved in with a retired officer, Alexei Naumov, a connoisseur of art and a courtier [5]. There, he began working on the Sorochinskaya Yarmarka. Financial hardship worsened, and he was forced to work as an accompanist to make a living. Alcoholism has tightened its grip on society. He was plagued by visual hallucinations, depression, and indifference. Even Stasov began to complain that ‘Mussarion’ was sinking to the bottom of the sea [4].
On 13 February 1881 a carriage arrived at the Nikolayevsky Military Hospital in Saint Petersburg. The patient it carried, technically ineligible for treatment, was Mussorgsky. Through the efforts of concerned friends, he was admitted as a ‘freelance servant’ and given a private room in the hospital [1]. At 42 years of age, he was homeless, penniless, and frail. However, his spirits lifted, and he began composing again—right there in his hospital bed.
The Painter Ilya Repin visited and produced an honest, haunting portrait of the composer. Mussorgsky, dishevelled and exhausted, wears a hospital gown over an embroidered shirt. His eyes express heartache and a quiet, confused resignation to fate. Repin later marvelled: how had this man with refined manners, a noble lineage, and exquisite intellect descended into ruin? They shared brilliant conversations, laughter, and philosophical musings on the fate of Russian art. Repin’s portrait shocked the public. Mussorgsky looked far older than his 42 years. However, in his expression, there is no despair—only hope. Everything he had time to write was extraordinary, even if the world had yet to recognise it.
Repin painted the portrait in just four sessions, working without an easel in the cramped ward. He was turned away on the fifth—Mussorgsky had died the day before. According to his friends, the composer bribed the hospital watchman to bring him a final drink. He suffered a stroke and died on 16 March 1881 at dawn. His last words were: ‘It’s all over’. The money from the sale of Repin’s painting went towards Mussorgsky’s monument at Tikhvin Cemetery.
Repin outlived many of his contemporaries and witnessed the global triumph of Mussorgsky’s music. Feodor Chaliapin’s portrayal of Boris Godunov became legendary. To honour his friend, Repin dedicated his final painting, Hopak, which echoed the spirit of Sorochinskaya Yarmarka.
After Mussorgsky’s death, his manuscripts were entrusted to Rimsky-Korsakov. The composer completed Khovanshchina and heavily edited Boris Godunov, rewriting many scenes to suit his own tastes. As a result, for decades, audiences have only known Rimsky-Korsakov’s version of Mussorgsky’s masterpiece [2].
Bibliography:
[1] Brown, David. 2002. Mussorgsky: His Life and Works. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
[2] Taruskin, Richard. 1993. Musorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
[3] Musorgsky, Modest. 1984. M. P. Musorgskiy: Letters. Edited by Eugenia Gordeyeva, 2nd edition, Moscow: Muzyka.
[4] Gordeyeva, Eugenia. 1989. Mussorgsky in the Recollections of Contemporaries. Moscow: Muzyka.
[5] Volkov, Solomon. 1995. Saint Petersburg: A Cultural History. Translated by Antonina Bouis. New York: The Free Press.
