Born in Karevo in the government of Pskov on 21 March 1839, died in St Petersburg on 28 March 1881; Modest Mussorgsky was a composer. He attended the school of cadets of the guards in St Petersburg and worked for a time as a civil servant; as a composer he was trained above all by Mily Balakirev, in whose circle, the so-called Mighty Handful, he developed a national Russian musical language. His output comprises the operas “Boris Godunov” and “Khovanshchina”, the piano cycle Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), the song cycle Songs and Dances of Death and orchestral pieces; a declamation modelled on the melody of speech is characteristic. Many works remained unfinished and were later prepared for performance by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and others. In the Cybele catalogue his music is heard in an arrangement: Jörg Endebrock and Konrad Graf recorded Pictures at an Exhibition on Arrangements for 2 Organs and Percussion (Vol. 1, 2017).
Modest Mussorgsky
Composer
