Pictures at an Exhibition - Mussorgsky

Pictures at an Exhibition was composed by the Russian Nationalist composer Modeste Mussorgsky in 1874. It was originally written for piano, but it has been arranged dozens of times for orchestras and other smaller ensembles. The one we will hear has been arranged by Maurice Ravel.

This work was written in memory of Mussogsky's artist friend Viktor Hartmann.
It is a musical depiction of Mussorgy's experience of walking through Hartmann's posthumous art exhibit.

Besides creating original "soundtracks" to each painting, Mussorgsky also wrote numerous "Promenades" as interludes between many of the movements to symbolize his own impressions walking between the paintings.

The video we will watch in class is available to view online for free on the Naxos Video site. It is of the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the finest orchestras in the world, conducted by Simon Rattle. It is from a DVD of a live concert with several other works on it. You should be able to select the "Chapters" tab and jump to Pictures at an Exhibtion, which runs from 0'50" to 1'23". Not only is it an outstanding recording with brilliant playing, but the video is of very high quality with excellent close-ups of all of the instruments.

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Some Connections and Directions:

• Nationalism
• Art History 
• Folk Culture
• Russian History 

At the University of Indiana, Professor David Ward-Steinman teaches a course called "Connections: Music-Art-Poetry" Check out the images from Hartmann's original exhibition. (Link located near the bottom of the left sidebar)

Embedded below is unique interpretation of this work, using animation and the music as social commentary. It's a pretty clever use of the music.

A Lesson in Moderation from Mussorgsky

Isaac brought up the point that it might be difficult to draw a connection between Nursing and the music we are studying, and I agreed. However, I did a quick google search for Mussorgsky - the composer of Pictures at an Exhibition, which we will study next week - and nurse, and it turns out he wrote several songs about his memories of childhood.

A collection of related songs is called a Song Cycle, and Mussorgsky wrote a song cycle called The Nursery. Now, the nurses in these songs are not the medical nurses, but more like Nannies, so I admit the stretch.

Mussorgsky was an army officer for a time, and became friends with an Army doctor, who was also a fellow Russian composer, Alexander Borodin. Read more about that here. He and Borodin would be two of the five greatest composers from Russia known as "the Mighty Handful".

Unfortunately, Mussorgsky, as well as several of his friends suffered and died from alcoholism. From his Wikipedia entry:

While alcoholism was Mussorgsky's personal weakness, it was also a behavior pattern considered typical for those of Mussorgsky's generation who wanted to oppose the establishment and protest through extreme forms of behavior. One contemporary notes, "an intense worship of Bacchus was considered to be almost obligatory for a writer of that period. It was a showing off, a 'pose,' for the best people of the [eighteen-]sixties." Another writes, "Talented people in Russia who love the simple folk cannot but drink." Mussorgsky spent day and night in a Saint Petersburg tavern of low repute, the Maly Yaroslavets, accompanied by other bohemian dropouts. He and his fellow drinkers idealized their alcoholism, perhaps seeing it as ethical and aesthetic opposition. This bravado, however, led to little more than isolation and eventual self-destruction 

Does this misguided view of binge drinking and peer pressure sound familiar? It didn't work out for Mussorgsky and his friends, and this story serves as a good lesson in moderation.