Musorgsky

"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