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Mussorgsky - Piano Music

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was born into a wealthy landowning family in Karevo, Russia. He developed a great facility at the piano, but eventually chose a military career. In 1857 he met Balakirev, whom he asked for composition lessons. The following year Mussorgsky passed through a spiritual and emotional crisis and resigned his army commission with the intention of composing full-time. His music soon began to enjoy public performances but his mental instability continued, and he was preoccupied helping to manage his family´s estate. The decline in his family´s fortunes led him to accept low-level civil service positions. In 1865 he underwent his first serious bout of alcoholism (probably as a reaction to his mother´s death that year) and in 1867 he was dismissed from his post. He spent the summer at his brother´s country house, where he wrote his first important orchestral work, St. John´s Night on the Bare Mountain. On his return to St. Petersburg Mussorgsky, like the other members of the Balakirev circle (ironically dubbed the ´Mighty Handful´), became interested in operatic naturalism. Early in 1869 Mussorgsky re-entered government service and, in more settled conditions, was able to complete the original version of the opera Boris Godunov. This was rejected by the Marinsky Theatre and Mussorgsky set about revising it. A successful production was finally mounted in February 1874. Progress on another historical opera, Khovanshchina, was interrupted mainly because the composer’s heavy drinking left him incapable of sustained creative effort. Still, some of Mussorgsky’s greatest works belong to this period, including the song cycle Songs and Dances of Death and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition, inspired by a memorial exhibition of drawings by his friend Victor Hartmann. When Mussorgsky was obliged to leave the his government post, the contralto Darya Leonova provided him with some employment and a home after he had turned to her, saying that there was nothing left for him but to beg in the streets; he was suffering from alcoholic epilepsy, and in February 1881 was taken to hospital, where he died a month later.

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Total pieces by Mussorgsky: 24

Title	Key	Published	Type	Level
A Child's Scherzo - First Version	D Major	1859	Piece	8+
A Child's Scherzo - Second Version	D Major	1860	Piece	8
A Tear	G Minor	1880	Piece	6
Childhood Memory	B Minor	1857	Piece	8
Fair Scene - from The Fair at Sorochintsi	n/a	1880	Transcription	8+
First Punishment	A Minor	1865	Piece	7
Hopak of the Young Ukrainians, from The Fair at Sorochintsi - First Version	n/a	1880	Transcription	8
Hopak of the Young Ukrainians, from The Fair at Sorochintsi - Second Version	n/a	1880	Transcription	8
In the Village	B Minor	1880	Piece	7
Intermezzo in the Classic Manner - First Version	B Minor	1861	Piece	7
Intermezzo in the Classic Manner - Transcription	B Minor	1867	Transcription	8+
Meditation: Album Leaf	n/a	1880	Piece	6
Near the Southern Shore of the Crimea: Capriccio	B-flat Minor	1880	Piece	7
Nurse and I	E Minor	1865	Piece	7
On the Southern Shore of the Crimea	n/a	1880	Piece	8
Passionate Impromptu - First Version	F-sharp Major	1859	Piece	7
Passionate Impromptu - Second Version	F-sharp Major	1859	Piece	7
Pictures at an Exhibition	n/a	1886	Suite	8+
Reverie	E-flat Minor	1865	Piece	7
Scherzo - First Version	C-sharp Minor	1858	Piece	8
Scherzo - Second Version	C-sharp Minor	1858	Piece	8+
Sonata in C for four hands	C Major	1860	Four hands	8
The Capricious One	n/a	1865	Piece	8+
The Seamstress	D-flat Major	1871	Piece	8+