Modeste Petrovich Mussorgsky: Music Analysis

Modeste Petrovich Mussorgsky’s (1839-1881) Songs and Dances of Death was his final composition, composed in 1877, in years of artistic confidence that followed the success of his masterpiece, the opera Boris Godunov. Boris Godunov encapsulates many of Mussorgsky’s innovations including those towards his approach to the setting of the Russian language: his biographer, Robert W. Oldani observes, Mussorgsky’s “quest to find a musical equivalent for the patterns, inflections, pace and cadence of spoken Russian, to fix in music the paralexical aspects of speech that give it plasticity and nuance.” Indeed, Mussorgsky was one of a group of Russian composers known as the "Mighty Five,"- so dubbed by the influential contemporaneous critic V. V. Stasov.

The group comprised Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin as well as Mussorgsky, who together established a romantic nationalist movement in Russia during the 19th century. Their musical language was often commented on not only for its innovative approach to the setting of the Russian language, but also for their use of traditional Russian dance themes, modal harmonies, as well as orientalism (looking to Russia’s Eastern influences) – seen in works such as Borodin’s Prince Igor or Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and indeed Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. It was arguably this innovative, idiomatic approach to the Russian language, as well as its nationalist dramatic setting which so appealed to the Russian speaking audiences, who flocked to Mussorgsky’s opera. Conversely, Boris Godunov divided the Russian musical establishment of the time, who were more used to western, mainly Italian opera with its strong emphasis of legato and vocal line.
Were it not for his inability to see large scale works through to their completion – due to his lack of sustained concentration exacerbated by his excessive drinking habits and mental instabilities, that bare their roots from his time in the military – many argue Mussorgsky had the potential to have established himself as one of the great operatic composers. While this character flaw may have proved a loss to the world of opera, (for which he only completed one full scale work, not for a lack of attempting numerous other projects), the opportunity of smaller canvasses in song writing certainly appealed to Mussorgsky, who proved prolific in this genre.
It was in fact the aforementioned critic, V.

Stasov, who suggested that he set Arseny Golenishchev Kutuzov’s text to music. Each of the four songs in the Songs and Dances of Death has a different dedication, the first to the singer Anna Vorobyeva Petrova, the second to Mikhail Glinka’s sister Lyudmila Shestakova, the third to the bass Osip Petrova and lastly, the fourth to the General Kutuzov. The songs are poetic in their construction of narrative: in each song a narrator sets the scene, before the personification of death appears and a dialogue begins between death and another character; a dying child’s pleading mother, a consumptive young girl dreaming of love, a drunken old serf lost in a blizzard, and finally a battle field strewn with the dead. Throughout these songs Mussorgsky’s talent for characterisation is not only evident in its precision, but also in its universality; all classes, genders and spheres of Russian society are subject to his dramatic perception. While these songs’ construction might be poetic, the themes are all too poignant and familiar to everyday Russian life at the

time.
Musically, these songs adopt many of the innovative virtues epitomised in Boris Godunov, regarding language, harmony, structure and dramatic context.

Mussorgsky’s approach to language inspires the melodic line, creating a distinct lyrical idiom, but also this approach creates moments of dramatic priority over vocal elegance – this is most evidently in the agitato sections of the first song, Lullaby, but also the declamatory finale of The Field Marshall. Dramatic realism also influences the chose of form: the binary nature of the dialogue in Lullaby, but also the two distinct sections that make up the Serenade are clear examples of this. However, it is perhaps in the Trepak that Mussorgsky is at his most structurally inventive: the song starts with a simple melody for the narrator, which slowly transforms into the melody of Death’s Cossack inspired dance (which features a subtle quote of the Dies Irae), before morphing into a new closing melody which derives from both themes. This creates a seamless form, with no distinct moments of structural change, while also certainly not lacking musical contrasts. This blurring of structural boundaries has the effect of mirroring the songs setting within the environment of a blizzard, where ones own senses of sight, and indeed hearing would be blurred

themselves.
Mussorgsky had previously explored the reality surrounding mortality and suffering in what David Nice describes as “the cycle’s more introspective predecessor, Sunless” (also set to texts by Kutuzov). However, the contrasting settings and emphasises on realism and dramatism within each of the four songs in this set, offer the performer with much scope for exploring vocal and gestural dramatism to articulate the sentiments of each unique song. Many consider these songs his masterpiece in the genre, and indeed they have become his most popular, and most regularly performed song settings.