Mountains, Day 5 – St. John’s Eve on Bare Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky

This week’s theme is…Mountains! The stoic, majestic guardians of Earth’s geography, mountains have long inspired musicians with their monumental presence.  This week we examine some examples of this.

Mountains, Day 5 – St. John’s Eve on Bare Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky

Here’s something I didn’t know: Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov were once roomies for a year.  Can you image it?  The spunky young composers, both representatives of the Russian Five, BFFs, and living together in a little apartment in St. Petersburg in the 1870s.  They fastidiously shared their only piano, with Mussorgsky having accessing in the morning, and then Rimsky-Korsakov in the afternoon, during which Mussorgsky worked his job (I wonder if either of them ever just left stuff by the piano, rendering it occupied, and then went off to socialize – people never do that to practice rooms…).  Maybe uncle Balakirev, the Russian Five’s mentor and unifying human glue, would stop by from time to time and critique the scores they were creating.  It actually sounds like the makings of a great sitcom.  Maybe, “Everybody Loves Mily!” or “Two and a Half Russian Men”.  Picture it: the clean, fastidious naval man Rimsky-Korsakov and his daily foibles with the slovenly Mussorgsky, in spite of a deep affection and respect between the them.  At least once each episode a bumbling, self-important Mily Balakirev comes by to hammer through their most recent creations on the piano, constantly fussing and whining about their contents, rewriting them on the fly, all the while spouting opinions about all the other music in Europe.  “Oh, yes Mily!”  That would actually be a pretty good summary of that relationship.  Regarding Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, I guess opposites attract.  Shortly after this, Mussorgsky served as Rimsky-Korsakov’s best man.  They really were BFFs.

And I guess opposites attract, just like sitcoms, or maybe a musical “odd couple”.  Within the parameters of the Mighty Five, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov were about as different as could be.  While they both would have supported the general mission of the Balakirev’s group, which was to create and promote a distinctive Russian national music, free of the artificial rigor of the academy, their approaches could not have been more different.  Rimsky-Korsakov seemed to have a knack for clarity – clear orchestration, clear form, clear harmony.  It was this clarity that allowed him to work as a professor in Russian conservatories, and even though he lacked formal training, on which he focused heavily to remediate as he began the position, taking a concentrated diet of harmony and counterpoint, it did not seem to be at odds with his essence.  And his knack for orchestration, obvious even before his remedial work, helped this transition as well.  But even during the heydey of the Mighty Five, more academically-inclined Russian musicians seemed to respect him and his music more than the others. Mussorgsky could not have been at a more polar orientation from Rimsky-Korsakov.  His music was messy, but highly inspired.  He never set foot in a conservatory, instead clinging tightly to the vision of Balakirev’s circle, even after it dissolved – the disillusioned Mussorgsky took this very hard.  He seemed to gravitate toward the lifestyle of a tortured, idealistic, starving artist, never achieving stable employment (his government job eventually stopped paying him), becoming mired in drink, and dying in despair.  But through all of this he was writing his rough-shod, inspired, deeply Russian music, never polishing his craft as Rimsky-Korsakov had, for better or worse.

It reminds me of debates that I sometimes see on the internet about whether or not it is worthwhile to learn music theory or not.  Detractors worry that it will homogenize their musical originality, imposing a clean, sterile patina over their spontaneous voice.  Supporters claim that the competence and sophistication of learning the nuts and bolts of the craft cannot help but to increase the competence and clarity with which musical ideas are expressed.  As a trained musician and passionate theory teacher myself I tend to sympathize with the supporters, but I also recognize the counterargument.  It is certainly possible that imposing a tradition on one’s voice may stifle individuality, but I tend to think that basic theory and harmony knowledge can only help musicians to be more competently expressive; and in discussing the Russian Five we are talking about musicians who were quite competent beyond the standards of most collegiate music admissions today.  In other words, I’m sure Mussorgsky could have easily passed basic music theory courses in our modern universities.

But, that aside, I think comparing Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov bears out this debate in an interesting way.  Part of me responds to Mussorgsky’s raw, unfiltered passion, and another part of me responds to Rimsky-Korsakov’s streamlined sheen.  And due to the general narrative of Mussorgsky’s creative pursuits, we have the opportunity to behold something of a synthesis between Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky.  The narrative to which I refer is the tendency for his contemporaries and survivors to touch up and even rewrite his works in order to “fix” them.  His contemporaries, even his strongest supporters, recognized the raw, unfinished character of his music were generally not all that comfortable with it.  Consequently, much of the music you may hear by Mussorgsky has been altered with regard to harmony, orchestration, and even form in order to work more congruently within European musical traditions.  Was it a good idea?  I’ll let you be the judge of that.

My first taste of Mussorgsky’s music was in the 1990s, probably around the time I was 10 or so.  I went with my brother, mom, and grandma to the movies to see a theatrical re-release of Disney’s original Fantasia of 1940 (perhaps a 50th anniversary screening?) , which includes this impressive segment that effectively pairs the highly profane imagery of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain with the exquisite sanctity of Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria:

 

But that’s actually an arrangement of an arrangement.  After Mussorgsky’s death Rimsky-Korsakov spearheaded an effort to complete Mussorgsky’s unfinished works and revise many of the finished ones, preparing editions that he considered more suitable for performance given his years of conservatory experience.  He recounts that his edition of A Night on Bald Mountain was challenging to complete.  Drawing from several works in Mussorgsky’s output, many music historians point out that it is in many ways more appropriate to call this piece a fantasia by Rimsky-Korsokav on themes of Mussorgsky, so removed is it from the organization of Mussorgsky’s original material.  But, if you hear Bald Mountain on an orchestra program today, chances are that is what you will hear.  It sounds like this:

 

And, finally, here is Mussorgsky’s rarely performed original, St. John’s Eve on Bare Mountain:

 

 

Do you hear how messy it is?  There’s no formal unity and the orchestration is mush.  It would probably receive poor marks in a conservatory orchestration class.  But, it does indeed contain numerous moments that feel sinister and inspired, quite possibly beyond Rimsky-Korsakov’s arrangement.  But Rimsky-Korsakov’s version is so much more satisfying in its form and the clarity of its orchestration.  So, which is better?

Of course that’s a rhetorical question, although I would probably find myself listening to Rimsky-Korsakov’s version for a handful of reasons, not the least of which is that I am most familiar with it.  But Mussorgsky’s original is fascinating, isn’t it!  Some of those touches are positively eerie in ways that the same moments in Rimsky-Korsakov’s version can’t quite touch.
So, do we have to make a choice between formal clarity and inspiration?  I hope not, but maybe we sometimes do.  Still, I tend to come down on the side of formal clarity myself, overall.  But Rimsky-Korsakov’s version is a fitting tribute to the eccentricity and rawness of his good friend and personal foil, an inspiring synthesis of their respective gifts, and a musical analogue to their odd-couple relationship.  Rimsky-Korsakov’s “fantasy” actually manages to give us the best of both worlds in a very real sense, applying his formal and orchestrational clarity to Mussorgsky’s raw, primal and inspired musical content.

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Music about Poultry, Day 2 – “The Hut on Hen’s Legs” from Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky

The theme of this week’s Smart and Soulful blog is…Music about poultry!  Every piece this week contains some illustration or reference to great birds that have been used for human food consumption.  While the works in this playlist span centuries I think you will be struck by how similar the representations tend to be across styles.  We’ve always been fascinated by birds and their unique mannerisms have provided musicians with inspiration and material to work into their compositions throughout human history.  Some have done it almost obsessively, but for many musicians it was just the right thing to try at a certain time.

Music about Poultry, Day 2 – “The Hut on Hen’s Legs” from Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky

Do chicken legs ever strike you as grotesque?

It seems the Russian art composers have always had a penchant for incorporating their national folk music into their creative output.  Russian classical music is a newer kid on the block in comparison with other great cultures of the West (the only significant body of classical music that is younger is American music), finding its first footing during the 19th century and bounding onto the international stage in a full flowering of intense, national romanticism.  Starting right then and there Russian composers have worked the folk traditions of their cultural heritage into their music in blatant and unapologetic ways that would have made other traditions blush.  I’m not sure what it is about the Russian character that embraced this tendency so completely, but you simply don’t see it expressed that fully, even at all, in the musical sensibilities of the other great European national cultures of classical music, German, Italian, French, English.   Most composers can probably be found to have quoted at least a little of their native folk music from time to time, or made reference to a national story or hero here and there.  But all that occupies a pretty small percentage of an art that is usually governed by high ideals and the quest for pure art.  

Many music lovers with an affinity for the Russian music of the nineteenth century are attracted to its dirtiness and rough edges, its unabashed digging into the murky past and mining the treasuries of both folk melodies, exploited liberally for melodic material by even the most refined Russian composers (like Tchaikovsky), and an evocative body of stories and legends that seems to stretch backward deep into a past obscured by fog and mist.  This mysterious past shaped the musicians of Russia’s romantic present, yielding figures that often came across as primal and unfinished, their music almost reveling in these qualities and even relying on them to sing in their distinctive voice, as many of these nationalist Russian romantics worked, sometimes awkwardly, to make their contributions to the modern West to which they had only recently awakened.

While all of the great Russian composers evoke this coarseness and unqualified embrace of their folklore to varying degrees, the most uneven of them all is Modest Mussorgsky.  What he lacked in formal training and rigorous technique he made up for in the forcefulness and originality of his ideas and musical vision; this is a widely held consensus among those who evaluate Mussorgsky’s music and, indeed, many think that his lack of formal technique is an essential component of his freshness and impact  And it is this freshness that has allowed a small handful of his works to take hold in the concert repertoire and enjoy the magnitude of performances they do.

One of the “Mighty Five” of Mily Balakirev’s musical circle, of the other 4 he competes only with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for current fame and popularity.  It’s interesting to compare them.  Both of their careers reflect the self-taught reliance on instinct that characterised Balakirev’s philosophy and mentoring, but it’s almost like Mussorgsky chose the path of the disaffected starving artist, never comfortable financially (he was from aristocratic lineage, but the liberation of the serfs crippled his inheritance), prone to heavy drinking, and always striving after authenticity and realism in his work, no matter the cost.  His last few years are are a sad and difficult story to discover.  Rimsky-Korsakov, on the other hand, was elevated to the status of professor at the rather new St. Petersburg Conservatory, which inevitably tempered his “writing by ear” approach, forcing him to adopt a new academic rigour even if he was only a step or two ahead of his students on certain days.  But it is interesting to consider what would have been had a member of Balakirev’s “Five” not come into such close contact with the academic establishment.  Professorship forced Rimsky-Korsakov to polish his harmony, orchestration and form.  It’s rather at odds with the Five’s early and oft-stated mistrust of the academic sensibility.  Still, to have a human resource trained as Rimsky-Korsakov editing works of his fellow blood-brothers has certainly affected the editions that have come down to us.  Perhaps much of what we know of Mussorgsky has been retouched by Rimsky-Korsakov’s refined hand.  And not just by him; there has been a tendency for interpreters and editors to all but re-write much of Mussorgsky’s music.  This ranges from full-out reharmonizing, as has been done with his great opera Boris Godunov, to a more respectful orchestrating of solo piano works, as is the case with his well-known Pictures at an Exhibition.  The original version for solo piano, while popular, is not as famous as Maurice Ravel’s colorful orchestration.  And there’s a version by Leopold Stokowski which is a little less…French, but it’s Ravel’s orchestration that you will hear the most often.  And in spite of the history of retouching and reorchestrating, Mussorgsky’s vision muscles its way through, delivering with primal force the often grotesque mystery of the Russian folk tradition.

Less than a decade prior to Mussorgsky’s untimely death (he was barely 40), his friend, colleague, and fellow Russian, the artist and architect Viktor Hartmann, died suddenly at the age of 39.  A year after Hartmann’s death a major exhibition of his paintings was organized in his honor, including some examples on loan from Mussorgsky’s personal collection.  The experience of visiting the exhibit and beholding the wide range of subjects that inhabit Hartmann’s works inspired Mussorgsky to craft a personal tribute to his friend, which became the virtuoso piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.  Tied together by a meandering prelude which illustrates walking from piece to piece, composed in 11/4 time (itself a nod to Russian folk song in which irregular meters abound), that reappears between movements, Mussorgsky created a wide variety of images, colors and moods, all related to different paintings by Hartmann.  The most grotesque, which is the penultimate movement, is based on a subject from Russian folklore, the frightful witch Baba Yaga.

Descriptions of Baba Yaga’s nature are ambiguous and hard to pin down.  Fantastic stories about her are populated with conflicting details regarding her malicious or helpful nature, and the whole story feels like a vestige from a more primitive and pantheistic time.  But what seems certain is that she was very ugly and you probably did not want to be caught alone in the forest near her hut.  Oh, and her hut can walk because it has a pair of chicken legs.

Isn’t that a bizarre and unsettling image?  I think chicken legs are ugly enough when they’re on chickens, but in this context they’re positively nightmarish.   Based on his musical depiction, I think it’s safe to say that Mussorgsky agreed:

This short and ferocious scherzo captures the hen-like movements of the hut’s legs and the generally terrifying nature of Baba Yaga’s presence in equal measure.  It feels to me like a precursor of Shostakovich’s savage and feverish symphonic scherzo movements (the one from his Tenth Symphony, said to be a brief, furious, and unrelenting musical portrait of Joseph Stalin, is my absolute favorite) but with a touch of Danny Elfman atmosphere laid on top.  The end of the movement cuts out here because it transitions seamlessly to the completely different and utterly grand finale depicting Hartmann’s design for the front gate of Ukraine’s capital city, Kiev.
This movement from Mussorgsky reveals him to be a most important figure in the flow of the rather young Russian romantic musical tradition.  While his imperfections seemed to invite later musicians to refine his works, maybe this actually helped them to internalize his manner and strengths more deeply, allowing his voice to echo within their own.  I think there’s probably some truth to that as Mussorgsky’s raw, primal quality continued to resonate through Russian music a century after his death.

Want to listen to Mussorgsky’s original version for solo piano?

 

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