Modest Musorgsky was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century Russian music. Now, in this new volume in the Master Musicians series, David Brown gives us the first life-and-works study of Musorgsky to appear in English for over a half century. Indeed, this is the largest such study of Musorgsky to have appeared outside Russia.
Brown shows how Musorgsky, though essentially an amateur with no systematic training in composition, emerged in his first opera, Boris Godunov, as a supreme musical dramatist. Indeed, in this opera, and in certain of his piano pieces in Pictures at an Exhibition, Musorgsky produced some of the most startlingly novel music of the whole nineteenth century. He was also one of the most original of all song composers, with a prodigious gift for uncovering the emotional content of a text. As Brown illuminates Musorgsky's work, he also paints a detailed portrait of the composer's life. He describes how, unlike the systematic and disciplined Tchaikovsky, Musorgsky was a fitful composer. When the inspiration was upon him, he could apply himself with superhuman intensity, as he did when composing the initial version of Boris Godunov. Sadly, Musorgsky deteriorated in his final years, suffering periods of inner turmoil, when his alcoholism would be out of control. Finally, unemployed and
all but destitute, he died at age forty-two. His failure to complete his two remaining operas, Khovanshchina and Sorochintsy Fair, Brown concludes, is one of music's greatest tragedies.
Written by one of the leading authorities on nineteenth-century Russian composers, Musorgsky is the finest available biography of this giant of Russian music.
Industry Reviews
"A masterfully wrought, well-illustrated and elegantly crafted biography...The book is destined to become a cornerstone of English-language Russian music scholarship and is recommended reading." --Slavic and East European Journal
"A no-holds-barred biography.... Brown enthusiastically traces Musorgsky's entire output in a rich historical and social context. He draws freely on the latest scholarship to give us a new vision of the composer.... In addition to being a state-of-the-art guide to the composer's life and works, it is a useful introduction to the history of mid-19th-century Russian music. For those undaunted by the density of Brown's musical examples, his illumination of this
impressive body of work can only foster deeper appreciation and further investigation."--New York Times Book Review
"A no-holds-barred biography.... Brown enthusiastically traces Musorgsky's entire output in a rich historical and social context. He draws freely on the latest scholarship to give us a new vision of the composer.... In addition to being a state-of-the-art guide to the composer's life and works, it is a useful introduction to the history of mid-19th-century Russian music. For those undaunted by the density of Brown's musical examples, his illumination of this
impressive body of work can only foster deeper appreciation and further investigation."--New York Times Book Review
"Musorgsky is a deeply provocative and mysterious figure. In a short and undisciplined life, he produced some of the most haunting and memorable music ever written. David Brown's new biography--characteristically vigorous, approachable and opinionated--weaves the great Russian's life and art into a single story, that will be valued by performers, music-lovers and students of musical history."--Gerard McBurney, composer, broadcaster, and lecturer at the Royal
Academy of Music, London
