Modest Mussorgsky, master of improvisation, illustrated in the Presidential Library

March 21, 2019 marks the 180th anniversary of the birth of Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881), one of the greatest Russian composers, a member of the “Mighty Handful”, who followed the deepest realism in large musical forms and brought the people to the stage for the first time in the opera “Boris Godunov".

The future composer was born in the family of poor landowner Pyotr Mussorgsky. He spent his childhood on the estate in Pskov Region, among lakes and forest thicket. The breadth of the mother's outlook and his innate talent, interest in many things helped not to remain uneducated. The children were engaged in reading, studying foreign languages ​​and music. An old piano was in the house, and by the time he was seven, Modest played a small volume of Liszt’s compositions. And in nine years he performed concerts more difficult. It would seem that the making of music was easy for him, but the young lad was not diligent in his diligence. Solfeggio, annoyed gamma caused him rejection. I didn’t want to “hammer out” a musical instrument, but to play music! He loved music, willingly improvised. Prickly, stubborn, ready to stand up to the end on his Modest has been like this since childhood. “A good warrior will come out!” - noted the eldest men in the family.  

All the Mussorgskys descended from an ancient noble family and, when they reached the proper age, served in military units. The last scions of Mussorgsky, Modest and Filaret, did not escape this fate. As soon as Modest was ten years old, he and his elder brother were taken to St. Petersburg, where they were enrolled in the Guards Warrant Officer School, a privileged military academy. After graduating from it, seventeen-year-old Modest Mussorgsky was assigned to serve in the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment. Ahead loomed a brilliant military career, but quite unexpectedly, the young man wrote a resignation...

In the spring of 1859, 20 years old, he retired.

While at the house of Dargomyzhsky, Mussorgsky met Caesar Cui, the son of a Russian, a young officer who had recently graduated from the School of Engineering, but already irrevocably sworn music. Cui, in turn, introduced Modest to Miliy Alekseevich Balakirev, who gathered around him a "Mighty Handful" of young talents who conquered the listeners with "a new distinctive Russian musical force. These three talented young men came together unusually closely, because for all three equally the music was the first thing in the world in which they so zealously sought to realize themselves”, - we read in the third volume (Vol. 5/6) of the Herald of Europe (1881). Not to become famous, not to get rich, because, according to Mussorgsky, "art is a means for talking with people, not a goal!".

The “Balakirev circle” was growing, and its new participants (N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, A. P. Borodin, and others) were not inferior to the “old men” in talent, power and originality. However, Modest Mussorgsky stood out even against this brilliant background. Everyone knew that he wrote music to the poems of N. A. Nekrasov and A. N. Ostrovsky, but a cycle of romances by an unknown author appeared - over time, it turned out that he was Modest Petrovich himself. He was literally gifted, therefore, later himself often took up the libretto for his operas. On the advice of the literary critic V. V. Nikolsky, the composer began work on an opera based on the plot of the poem by Alexander Pushkin “Boris Godunov” on his own libretto.

In 1874 the premiere of Boris Godunov took place on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg; great success! From now on, the central part of Boris became a favorite in the repertoire of F. I. Chaliapin.

In 1873, Mussorgsky began work on the "folk musical drama" Khovanshchina, its plot was proposed by the critic V. V. Stasov. In the rough, the opera was completed in the summer of 1880, but only after the death of Musorgsky "Khovanshchina" was finally instrumented by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov.

Ten musical illustrations by Mussorgsky to watercolor drawings by the artist V. A. Hartman “Pictures at an Exhibition” were very refreshed. They were virtuoso pieces for piano. In 1876, Mussorgsky decided to write a lyric-comedy opera "Sorochinsky Fair" on the plot of N. V. Gogol. He worked on it until the end of his life, but he did not manage to finish it - the difficult financial situation forced the composer to enter the service in the Audit Commission of the State Control, where he served until his death in March 1881. He was only 42 years old.