The Life of Musorgsky

This book, first published in 1999, is a biography of Russia's greatest musical dramatist, Modest Musorgsky (1839–81).

Caryl Emerson (Author)

9780521485074, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 September 1999

218 pages, 22 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.28 kg

'Emerson manages to flesh out the man's character and to offer plausible theories as to the reasons for Musorgsky's decline.' The Musical Times

Modest Musorgsky is Russia's greatest musical dramatist. When he died in 1881 in St Petersburg at the age of forty-two, in poverty and relative obscurity, he was known for a single opera, Boris Godunov and a handful of eccentric 'realistic' songs set to prosaic Russian texts. He had no institutional connections, no 'degree', no family of his own, not even a permanent address. Except for Franz Liszt, no composer of stature knew of him outside Russia. Through the loyal (if controversial) intervention of his friends, his works survived in various editings into the early twentieth century, when revivals and evolving musical tastes restored him to new life. This account of his life, first published in 1999, emphasizes the psychological and economic factors that contributed to the composer's remarkable rise and tragic, premature end and is the first brief biography in English to make use of materials published in the new, de-Sovietized Russian academic climate.

Preface
1. Childhood and youth (1839–56)
2. Apprenticeship in Petersburg, 1850–60s: composers' evenings and the commune
3. Conservatories, 'circles', and Musorgsky at the musical edge
4. 1868–74: Musorgsky and Russian history
5. The 1870s: Musorgsky and death
6. Beyond tragedy: the final years
Epilogue: the Musorgsky problem, then and now
Musical appendix: what to look for in Musorgsky's style.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH]