Broderick Lemke

Advanced Conducting

8 October 2016

Modest Mussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition: Promenade

Modest Mussorgsky was born in Russia in 1839 and died in 1881. He was from the romantic era,
and his music falls into a highly nationalistic style of Russian music from this period. He was taught piano
lessons beginning at age six by his mother who was a professional piano player herself. Although he
received training in this particular area of his musical life he did not receive formal compositional
training, which was rather common amongst composers in Russia of this time.

He joined a group of composers called The Five which included Mily Balakirev (the leader),
Csar Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. These five composers
worked together and created ideals of what Russian music should be. One major impact of their views
was that form of their compositions was often organic rather than following the strict German forms
that came before. The forms were a byproduct that was merely determined by the musical nature of
themes.

One of his most famous works was Night on Bald Mountain, which he wrote and tried to work
into several other projects. This piece was eventually used in the Wizard of Oz, even though that was
clearly not his intention. This piece had shattering dissonances and primal cries, sounds that wouldnt be
heard until decades later in works like Stravinskys Rite of Spring. He was very clearly experimenting and
his lack of a compositional training may be partially the cause of this.

His mother passed away in in 1865, and after this Mussorgsky turned to Alcohol. He would
spend days drinking and none of his friends would hear from him, only for him to show up drunk and ill
on their doorsteps. He composed a little bit during this time, but he did not produce a large body of
works after this time, and passed away at the age of 42.

The piece Pictures at an Exhibition was written around the same time as Night on Bald Mountain
and features its own striking surprises. It featured measure-by-measure meter changes, thick textures,
and extremely original chord progressions. Not only that, it took the listener on a musical journey, using
the Promenade as transitional material between major movements, another adaptation of form to fit
his own needs, describing the narrative of walking through a gallery to see each painting.

As mentioned this piece is programmatic. It opens with the promenade movement which is
walking music, and it depicts a person walking through an art gallery. Each movement after describes a
piece of artwork from a gallery by Viktor Hartmann. Several of these pieces survive today, but others no
longer exist and we only have reimaginings by other artists.

Originally this piece of music was written by Mussorgsky on the piano, and has since been
transcribed for orchestra as well as band. The most famous transcription was by Maurice Ravel, which
was done for orchestra. The work is almost more famous today as this orchestration than the original,
which was so unique at the time for its textures.
 The form of our excerpt features an opening in which a solo instrument (voice 1, normally a
trumpet) plays a melody line that is very modal. It is then followed by the melodic line, repeated again
but this time with a harmony beneath it. After these four first measures there are another four
measures in which another section of melody is played with an orchestral answer. After this, the melody
is presented over stable homophonic texture that provides more complete understanding of harmony
that drives the melody.