Modest Petrovich from which work of art? A mighty bunch of Russian composers: Mussorgsky

Life, wherever it may affect; the truth, no matter how salty, bold, sincere speech to people... - this is my starter, this is what I want and this is what I would be afraid to miss.
From a letter from M. Mussorgsky to V. Stasov dated August 7, 1875

What a vast, rich world of art, if the target is a person!
From a letter from M. Mussorgsky to A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov dated August 17, 1875.

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky is one of the most daring innovators of the 19th century, a brilliant composer who was far ahead of his time and had a huge influence on the development of Russian and European musical art. He lived in an era of the highest spiritual uplift and profound social changes; it was a time when Russian social life actively contributed to the awakening of national self-awareness among artists, when works appeared one after another, from which exuded freshness, novelty and, most importantly, amazing real truth and poetry of real Russian life(I. Repin).

Among his contemporaries, Mussorgsky was the most faithful to democratic ideals, uncompromising in serving the truth of life, no matter how salty it is, and was so obsessed with bold ideas that even like-minded friends were often puzzled by the radicalism of his artistic quests and did not always approve of them. Mussorgsky spent his childhood years on a landowner's estate in the atmosphere of patriarchal peasant life and subsequently wrote in Autobiographical note, What exactly acquaintance with the spirit of Russian folk life was the main impetus for musical improvisations... And not only improvisations. Brother Filaret later recalled: In adolescence and youth and already in adulthood(Mussorgsky. - O. A.) always treated everything folk and peasant with special love, considered the Russian peasant to be a real person.

The boy's musical talent was discovered early. In his seventh year, studying under the guidance of his mother, he was already playing simple works by F. Liszt on the piano. However, no one in the family seriously thought about his musical future. According to family tradition, in 1849 he was taken to St. Petersburg: first to the Peter and Paul School, then transferred to the School of Guards Ensigns. It was luxury casemate where they taught military ballet, and following the infamous circular must obey and keep opinions to oneself, knocked out in every possible way out of my head, secretly encouraging frivolous pastime. Mussorgsky's spiritual maturation in this environment was very contradictory. He excelled in military sciences, for which was honored with especially kind attention... by the emperor; was a welcome participant in parties, where he played polkas and quadrilles all night long. But at the same time, an internal craving for serious development encouraged him to study foreign languages, history, literature, art, take piano lessons from the famous teacher A. Gerke, and attend opera performances, despite the discontent of the military authorities.

In 1856, after graduating from the School, Mussorgsky was enrolled as an officer in the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment. The prospect of a brilliant military career opened before him. However, acquaintance in the winter of 1856/57 with A. Dargomyzhsky, Ts. Cui, M. Balakirev opened up other paths, and the spiritual turning point that was gradually brewing came. The composer himself wrote about this: Getting closer... with a talented circle of musicians, constant conversations and strong connections established with a wide circle of Russian scientists and writers, such as Vlad. Lamansky, Turgenev, Kostomarov, Grigorovich, Kavelin, Pisemsky, Shevchenko and others, especially stimulated the brain activity of the young composer and gave it a serious, strictly scientific direction.

On May 1, 1858, Mussorgsky submitted his resignation. Despite the entreaties of friends and family, he broke up with military service so that nothing would distract him from his musical studies. Mussorgsky is overwhelmed terrible, irresistible desire for omniscience. He studies the history of the development of musical art, plays 4 hands with Balakirev many works by L. Beethoven, R. Schumann, F. Schubert, F. Liszt, G. Berlioz, reads and reflects a lot. All this was accompanied by breakdowns and nervous crises, but in the painful overcoming of doubts, creative forces grew stronger, an original artistic individuality was forged, and a worldview position was formed. Mussorgsky is increasingly attracted to the life of ordinary people. How many fresh sides, untouched by art, teem in Russian nature, oh, so many! - he writes in one of the letters.

Mussorgsky's creative activity began vigorously. Work was in progress overflow, each work opened up new horizons, even if it was not completed. So the operas remained unfinished Oedipus the King And Salammbo, where for the first time the composer tried to embody the complex intertwining of the destinies of the people and a strong, powerful personality. The unfinished opera played an extremely important role for Mussorgsky’s work. Marriage(1 act 1868), in which, under the influence of Dargomyzhsky’s opera Stone Guest he used the almost unchanged text of N. Gogol's play, setting himself the task of musical reproduction human speech in all its subtlest bends. Fascinated by the idea of ​​software, Mussorgsky creates, like his fellow Mighty bunch, a number of symphonic works, including - Night on Bald Mountain(1867). But the most striking artistic discoveries were made in the 60s. in vocal music. Songs appeared where, for the first time in music, a gallery of folk types, people humiliated and insulted: Kalistrat, Gopak, Svetik Savishna, Lullaby for Eremushka, Orphan, Mushroom Picking. Mussorgsky’s ability to accurately and accurately recreate living nature in music is amazing ( I’ll notice some peoples, and then, on occasion, I’ll squeeze), reproduce a clearly characteristic speech, give the plot stage visibility. And most importantly, the songs are imbued with such a force of compassion for a disadvantaged person that in each of them an ordinary fact rises to the level of tragic generalization, to socially accusatory pathos. It's no coincidence that the song Seminarian was banned by censorship!

The pinnacle of Mussorgsky's creativity in the 60s. became an opera Boris Godunov(based on the drama by A. Pushkin). Mussorgsky began writing it in 1868 and presented it in the first edition (without the Polish act) in the summer of 1870 to the directorate of the imperial theaters, which rejected the opera, allegedly due to the lack of a female part and the complexity of the recitatives. After revision (one of the results of which was the famous scene near Kromy), in 1873, with the assistance of the singer Y. Platonova, 3 scenes from the opera were staged, and on February 8, 1874 - the entire opera (albeit with large bills). The democratically minded public greeted Mussorgsky's new work with true enthusiasm. However, the further fate of the opera was difficult, because this work most decisively destroyed the usual ideas about an opera performance. Everything here was new: the acute social idea of ​​​​the irreconcilability of the interests of the people and the royal power, and the depth of revelation of passions and characters, and the psychological complexity of the image of the child-killer king. The musical language turned out to be unusual, about which Mussorgsky himself wrote: By working on human speech, I have reached the melody created by this speech, I have reached the embodiment of recitative in melody.

Opera Boris Godunov- the first example of folk musical drama, where the Russian people appeared as a force that decisively influences the course of history. At the same time, the people are shown in many faces: mass, animated by a single idea, and a gallery of colorful folk characters, striking in their life-like authenticity. The historical plot gave Mussorgsky the opportunity to trace development of folk spiritual life, comprehend past in present, pose many problems - ethical, psychological, social. The composer shows the tragic doom of popular movements and their historical necessity. He came up with a grandiose plan for an opera trilogy dedicated to the fate of the Russian people at critical, turning points in history. Even while working on Boris Godunov he has a plan Khovanshchiny and soon begins to collect materials for Pugachevshchina. All this was carried out with the active participation of V. Stasov, who in the 70s. became close to Mussorgsky and was one of the few who truly understood the seriousness of the composer’s creative intentions. I dedicate to you the entire period of my life when “Khovanshchina” will be created... you gave it its beginning, - Mussorgsky wrote to Stasov on July 15, 1872.

Work on Khovanshchina proceeded in a complex manner - Mussorgsky turned to material that went far beyond the scope of the opera performance. However, he wrote intensively ( Work is in full swing!), although with long interruptions caused by many reasons. At this time, Mussorgsky was having a hard time experiencing the collapse. Balakirevsky circle, cooling of relations with Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev’s withdrawal from musical and social activities. The bureaucratic service (from 1868 Mussorgsky was an official in the Forestry Department of the Ministry of State Property) left only the evening and night hours for composing music, and this led to severe overwork and increasingly prolonged depression. However, despite everything, the creative power of the composer during this period amazes with the strength and richness of artistic ideas. In parallel with the tragic Khovanshchina Since 1875 Mussorgsky has been working on a comic opera Sorochinskaya fair(according to Gogol). This is good as it saves creative energy, wrote Mussorgsky. - Two pudoviki: “Boris” and “Khovanshchina” can crush you next to each other... In the summer of 1874 he created one of the outstanding works of piano literature - the cycle Pictures from the exhibition, dedicated to Stasov, to whom Mussorgsky was eternally grateful for his participation and support: No one warmed me up in all respects more warmly than you... no one showed me the path more clearly...

The idea to write a cycle Pictures from the exhibition arose under the impression of a posthumous exhibition of works by the artist W. Hartmann in February 1874. He was a close friend of Mussorgsky, and his sudden death deeply shocked the composer. The work proceeded rapidly and intensively: Sounds and thoughts hang in the air, I swallow and overeat, barely having time to scratch on the paper. And in parallel, 3 vocal cycles appear one after another: Children's(1872, based on his own poems), Without sun(1874) and Songs and dances of death(1875-77 - both at A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov station). They become the result of the composer’s entire chamber and vocal work.

Seriously ill, severely suffering from poverty, loneliness, lack of recognition, Mussorgsky stubbornly insists that will fight to the last drop of blood. Shortly before his death, in the summer of 1879, he, together with the singer D. Leonova, made a large concert tour in the south of Russia and Ukraine, performing Glinka’s music, Kuchkists, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, excerpts from his opera Sorochinskaya fair and writes significant words: Life calls for new musical work, broad musical work... to new shores until boundless art!

Fate decreed otherwise. Mussorgsky's health deteriorated sharply. In February 1881 there was a shock. Mussorgsky was placed in the Nikolaev military land hospital, where he died without having time to complete Khovanshchina And Sorochinskaya fair.

After his death, the entire composer’s archive went to Rimsky-Korsakov. He finished Khovanshchina, carried out a new edition Boris Godunov and achieved their production on the imperial opera stage. It seems to me that my name is even Modest Petrovich, and not Nikolai Andreevich, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote to his friend. Sorochinskaya fair completed by A. Lyadov.

The fate of the composer is dramatic, the fate of his creative heritage is complex, but the glory of Mussorgsky is immortal, for music was for him both a feeling and a thought about the beloved Russian people - a song about them... (B. Asafiev).

O. Averyanova

The son of a landowner. Having started his military career, he continued to study music in St. Petersburg, the first lessons of which he received in Karevo, and became an excellent pianist and a good singer. Communicates with Dargomyzhsky and Balakirev; resigns in 1858; the liberation of the peasants in 1861 affects his financial well-being. In 1863, while serving in the Forestry Department, he became a member of the “Mighty Handful”. In 1868 he entered service in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, after spending three years on his brother’s estate in Minkino to improve his health. Between 1869 and 1874 he worked on various editions of Boris Godunov. Having undermined his already poor health due to a morbid addiction to alcohol, he composes intermittently. Lives with various friends, in 1874 - with Count Golenishchev-Kutuzov (author of poems set to music by Mussorgsky, for example, in the cycle “Songs and Dances of Death”). In 1879 he made a very successful tour together with singer Daria Leonova.

The years when the idea of ​​“Boris Godunov” appeared and when this opera was created are fundamental for Russian culture. At this time, such writers as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were working, and younger artists like Chekhov, the Itinerants, asserted the priority of content over form in their realistic art, which embodied the poverty of the people, the drunkenness of priests, and police brutality. Vereshchagin created truthful paintings dedicated to the Russian-Japanese War, and in “The Apotheosis of War” he dedicated a pyramid of skulls to all the conquerors of the past, present and future; the great portrait painter Repin also turned to landscape and historical painting. As for music, the most characteristic phenomenon of this time was the "Mighty Handful", which set out to increase the importance of the national school, using folk legends to create a romanticized picture of the past. In Mussorgsky’s mind, the national school appeared as something ancient, truly archaic, immovable, including eternal folk values, almost shrines that could be found in the Orthodox religion, in folk choral singing, and finally, in the language that still retains the powerful sonority of distant origins. Here are some of his thoughts, expressed between 1872 and 1880 in letters to Stasov: “It’s not the first time to dig into black soil, but you want to dig into raw materials that are not fertilized, you don’t want to get to know the people, but you want to fraternize... Black soil power will manifest itself when you'll dig all the way to the bottom...”; “The artistic depiction of beauty alone, in its material meaning, is crude childishness - the childhood age of art. The finest features of nature person and human masses, annoyingly poking around in these little-explored countries and conquering them - this is the real calling of the artist.” The composer's vocation constantly encouraged his highly sensitive, rebellious soul to strive for something new, for discoveries, which led to a continuous alternation of creative ups and downs, which were associated with breaks in activity or its spreading in too many directions. “To such an extent I become strict with myself,” Mussorgsky writes to Stasov, “speculatively, and the stricter I become, the more dissolute I become.<...>There is no mood for small things; However, composing small plays is a relaxation while thinking about large creations. And for me, my relaxation becomes thinking about large creatures... that’s how everything goes upside down for me - sheer dissipation.”

The last days of the great Russian composer

Repin came to the Nikolaev military hospital to paint a portrait of Mussorgsky three more times. He was not allowed into the next session...

On the sunny morning of March 2, 1881, Ilya Repin walked through St. Petersburg in great confusion. On the eve of March 1, on the embankment of the Catherine Canal, the People's Will killed Alexander II. The terrorist Ignatius Grinevitsky threw a homemade bomb at the emperor’s feet, mortally wounding him and himself, as well as one of the guards accompanying the sovereign and a fourteen-year-old boy passerby. The capital was shocked by what happened, people were afraid to leave their houses. But Repin, who had recently arrived in St. Petersburg from Moscow, was more worried about another circumstance...

The fact is that the other day he read a note in a Moscow newspaper about the illness of the composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky. Next came a letter from the critic Stasov. It said that Garbage Man was very bad, the doctors found in him signs of either epilepsy or delirium tremens, a diseased liver, a completely worn-out heart (which is not surprising given Modinka’s lifestyle), and even a severe cold.

Mussorgsky was the artist's favorite friend. In the early 1870s, they met at the same place of Vladimir Stasov, and the master took on the role of guardian of young talents. They met most often at Stasov's. Sometimes Mussorgsky came to Repin while he was working and entertained him by playing the piano. Ilya Efimovich smiled, remembering that he was especially good at painting for “Khovanshchina.” And how much wine was drunk after such musical and artistic sessions! How delightful it was during these meetings to talk about people and feelings, about the funny and tragic, about strange and wonderful forms of art! Ilya was terribly bored without these conversations and without Modina’s music when he left for France for three whole years.

And in the last couple of years, Repin rarely saw Musoryanin, as the composer’s close friends called him. I heard from them that they also met with him only out of necessity, since these meetings invariably left a painful impression: Modya became sloppy, flabby, and was already reaching for a glass in the morning. If anyone could influence him, it was Stasov; with him, Mussorgsky pulled himself together and even looked quite respectable. But Vladimir Vasilyevich has no time to babysit Modeya.

The next day after the alarming letter from Stasov arrived, Repin got ready to go on the road: he was already supposed to go to the capital for the Ninth Exhibition of the Itinerants, but now he decided to hurry up and paint a portrait of his friend.

While the preparations were going on, an inner voice kept telling Ilya Efimovich that this idea was not good: it coincided more than once that after finishing the portrait, the person portrayed by Repin died. Most of the men who posed for “Barge Haulers on the Volga” and the writer Alexey Pisemsky have already become “victims” of his brush. Subsequently, the mystical pattern was confirmed more than once: surgeon Pirogov, writer Garshin, Prime Minister Stolypin - they all died soon after they appeared on Repin’s canvas...

However, Ilya Efimovich did not listen to the voice and hurried to the train. Leaving the station, he walked along Slonovaya Street to the Nikolaev Military Hospital and inquired with the attendant where the ward of the retired guard second lieutenant Mussorgsky was. In the general ward with light walls and windows covered with lime, Modest Petrovich's bed, fortunately, was separated by screens - thanks to Dr. Bertenson. Repin timidly squeezed behind the partition and saw a friend lying down reading a thick book. “About instrumentation, Hector Berlioz,” Ilya Efimovich saw the title and thought: Modya must have decided to fill the gaps in his musical education.

“Garbage man, you look great! When are you leaving? - Repin exclaimed with exaggerated cheerfulness. In fact, the appearance of the patient did not inspire optimism. “It’s incredible what this excellently educated guards officer, a witty conversationalist and an inexhaustible punster, has become. Where is that childishly cheerful butuz with a red potato nose, a spick-and-span bon vivant - perfumed, refined, fastidious? Is it really him? - thought Repin, looking with pain at Mussorgsky’s bluish, swollen face, his tangled hair, shaking hands and - yes, the invariably red nose that Modya had frozen off in his military youth.

Mussorgsky, putting the book aside, feverishly began to tell how the singer Daria Mikhailovna Leonova - the same one who sheltered him for the whole summer at her dacha - took him to a musical evening a couple of weeks ago. There he was accompanying on the piano and suddenly lost consciousness, but he quickly came to his senses and even got home on his own, but he could not sleep - he was so pounding from fear, from terrible visions, and sweat flowed like a river, and as soon as he lay down, he began to suffocate. In this condition he ended up in the hospital. But it seems better now.

He will soon return to work and finish Khovanshchina, Sorochinskaya Fair, Salambo, and Marriage, abandoned in his youth. Yes, and “Boris Godunov” needs work, it’s not for nothing that critics are dissatisfied with the opera. Even his colleague in “The Mighty Handful,” Cesar Cui, called “Godunov” an immature work, and its author “a composer who is not strict enough with himself.” But this is simply because Cui did not understand Godunov - few people understood him at all. It’s a shame, of course - Mussorgsky’s eyes filled with tears as usual - well, God is our Caesar’s judge. But he gave me this embroidered shirt and a warm robe - and Modest stuck out his chest, showing off the crimson lapels of the once expensive green robe.

In these same robe and shirt, Repin sat Mussorgsky in a chair by the window to pose. The weather then, and in the next three days that the artist came to the hospital for sessions, was beautiful, the light fell perfectly. Since Ilya Efimovich did not take the easel, he sat down with the canvas on the hospital table and spent the entire first hour mercilessly tormenting Modya: turn around, freeze, look here. And then he let me just sit and think about my own things. It was then that Repin caught that same look from Mussorgsky, at once childish, naive, trusting and somehow detached. The comrade seemed to know what would happen to him very soon, said goodbye and forgave himself and his strange life, in which he used his talent so unwisely, where there was so much disappointment and loneliness...

Then I remembered how they were already ten and thirteen years old. Their parents take them to St. Petersburg, to the famous throughout Russia and one of the oldest in the country Petrishule - the Main German School of St. Peter, on Nevsky Prospekt. The picture in the kaleidoscope changed, and now he and Kitosh enter the School of Guards Ensigns, but how could it be otherwise: family tradition, in the Mussorgsky family all men are connected with the army. But Modest served for only a couple of years, and when he turned nineteen, he quit military affairs for the sake of music, which, by the way, he never practiced professionally.

For many years she and her brother were inseparable. Kitushka was always timid in society, unlike the dandy Modi: the more people around, the brighter he shone. Playfully he could charm, charm, and make you fall in love with yourself. Ladies were captivated by his beautiful baritone voice and florid compliments; men were delighted by his erudition, successful puns, and subtle wit. Making friends with interesting people, Modya immediately drew Kitushka into his circle.

When serfdom was abolished in 1861, Modest and Filaret, like all Russian landowners, had to deal with an extremely difficult task - receiving a ransom for the land from former serfs, dealing with rent and hiring the now free labor force. Modest believed: as progressive and noble people, they should give the peasants their allotments and not demand farm-out payments. But the soft, usually compliant Kitushka unexpectedly showed strength of character and categorically disagreed with his brother.

Modest Petrovich was well aware that he understood absolutely nothing about farming, and if he took on any land and monetary issue, at best he found himself without profit, and more often at a loss. While his mother was alive, she sent either fifty or a hundred rubles, but the money instantly evaporated: all his life Mussorgsky wandered around rented apartments, sometimes subsisting on debt. He didn’t know how to save money, and the older he got, the more he drank. “Yes, drunkenness is a ruinous vice. And in my case, probably fatal,” Mussorgsky thought for the umpteenth time in recent days and crossed himself.

Now, in the hospital, he desperately missed his brother. In both joy and trouble, he always missed Kitushka by his side. And he had already left St. Petersburg for many years to go to the estate of his wife, the wealthy landowner Tatyana Balakshina, and there he happily immersed himself in family life. Remembering Quito, Mussorgsky, as usual, thought about Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov, who became his second brother for several years.

The twenty-five-year-old count entered his circle of friends and became a regular participant in Stasov’s traditional musical gatherings. When they met, Modest was already thirty-four, but despite the almost ten-year difference in age, he and Arseny immediately became friends - so much so that they could not live a day apart. Together they composed the vocal cycles “Without the Sun”, “Songs and Dances of Death”, the ballad “Forgotten”, and the romance “Vision”. Golenishchev-Kutuzov wrote the words, Mussorgsky wrote the music. The co-author of the libretto of “Sorochinskaya Fair” is also Arseny Arkadyevich.

When Modest was kicked out of his apartment for non-payment, he settled with Golenishchev-Kutuzov on Shpalernaya. Now, sitting in the hospital room, Mussorgsky had no doubt: this was one of the happiest periods in his life, although the usual disorder reigned in his work. After all, he had not finished any of his major musical works, he simply could not bring himself to pull himself together and finish the job: he was either distracted by a new idea, or suddenly lost inspiration and hurried to his favorite tavern, “Maly Yaroslavets”.

Suddenly Modest fidgeted restlessly in his chair, thinking about “Boris Godunov”: “Who will do this if I die?” (The opera did see the light and was staged at the Mariinsky Theater, but clearly needed editing.) And then he reassured himself: “There Rimsky-Korsakov is still trying to smooth and comb my “Godunov”, he will succeed.”

And for some reason I immediately remembered how they parted with Golenishchev-Kutuzov: he, like his brother Kitushka, got married and went to the village, taking up boring chores incomprehensible to Mussorgsky. They remained friends, but being friends at a distance is a mortal melancholy, and Modest needed people dear to his heart nearby to call them by cozy home names, walk together along the embankments and the Summer Garden, laugh at a good joke, drink wine, cry on his shoulder after frank confessions . But every year there were fewer and fewer such comrades in his life.


Mussorgsky was forced to admit that the departure of his friends not only caused him serious mental wounds. Simultaneously with the realization that it is impossible to return a person and with this hole in the heart you will have to somehow drag it out until your own death, the understanding came: pain can give birth to beautiful music.

This happened after the death of Mussorgsky’s beloved friend, Viktor Hartmann. Modest met him at the same Stasov's at the very end of the 1860s and immediately felt: this talented artist and the soul of any company was similar to himself not only in his artistry and wit, but also in his unhappy creative destiny. French on his father's side, an orphan from the age of four, Hartmann tried to revive the ancient Russian style in painting and architecture. But all of Victor’s architectural works either remained at the project stage or were short-lived, such as exhibition pavilions, which were destroyed after the closing of the vernissage. In painting, things were also not going very well; Hartmann was very worried, but when meeting with friends he still burst out with jokes and never complained about the frequent pain in his heart.

The last time Modest saw Victor was in the summer of 1873, when a friend came to St. Petersburg from his Kireevo estate near Moscow. They walked together after the concert along Furshtatskaya Street and, as always, excitedly shared news: about the latest changes in life, about what mutual acquaintances delighted or disappointed with, about the Russian theme in creativity. Hartmann invariably called Mussorgsky “divine,” and every time he was embarrassed and blushed like a high school student. And suddenly, literally in mid-sentence, Victor turned terribly pale, began to convulsively gasp for air and, clutching his heart, fell back against the wall of the house.

Completely at a loss and not knowing how to help, Mussorgsky with trembling hands unbuttoned his friend’s shirt collar. And when he caught his breath a little, he dragged him to his favorite “Maly Yaroslavets” for some tea - hoping that Victor would feel better and the tea would be replaced by more interesting drinks. However, that evening the friends did not have the chance to continue the fun: Hartmann admitted for the first time that his days were numbered... He complained, how damn insulting it was - after all, nothing had really been done in life! Soon Viktor Alexandrovich passed away.

About a year after his death, Stasov organized an exhibition of Hartmann's works, which presented the fruits of his fifteen years of labor - paintings and drawings made during trips to Europe and Russia. After visiting the vernissage, Mussorgsky decided on a rather unusual experiment, planning to write a collection of plays based on Hartmann’s work. This is how “Pictures at an Exhibition” appeared - but they, like almost everything the composer took on, remained unfinished. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov more than once suggested that he edit and polish “Pictures.”

Mussorgsky's thoughts spread to his composer friends. When Mode was not yet twenty, he “from the first word” became friends with the physician Alexander Borodin, who wrote music in his spare time and soon became famous as a great composer. Modest Petrovich was already composing plays himself, so they had something to discuss.

Then friends found like-minded people - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Cesar Cui. This community of the “new Russian music school” was headed by Mily Balakirev. Vladimir Stasov, the most senior and respected member of the company, aptly called the group of innovators “a small but already mighty bunch of Russian musicians.” “And we were not just a group of populist composers, it was a wonderful friendship,” Mussorgsky thought gloomily. - How annoying it is that after a few years Balakirev moved away, and the rest quarreled over petty squabbles! The group turned out to be not so powerful; they could not forgive each other for their weaknesses and mistakes.” Modest Petrovich again felt acute mental pain, as if the disagreement with his colleagues had happened just yesterday. I really wanted to drink to get rid of the spasm in my heart and again enter the state when an invisible kind hand takes the eternal needle out of my chest, and life seems understandable, serene and endless. Repin sensed his friend’s excitement and decided to distract him:

Modya, why were you called Modest?

Only now Mussorgsky noticed how uncomfortable it was for Repin to work without an easel. But Ilya seemed not to pay attention to the inconvenience - the portrait must have turned out well. Mussorgsky already knew what a friend was like when the painting didn’t work out for him. Take, for example, the portrait of Turgenev, in which the writer came out as a boring, tired old man, and all because his dear friend Viardot rejected the first - very successful - sketches and forced Ivan Sergeevich to pose from a different angle.

- Modest means modest in Latin. “Mother’s idea, she attached great significance to names,” Mussorgsky answered after a little internal struggle. He could not talk about his late beloved mother without tears.

Who is this modest guy here?! Yes, you, Modya, are a bon vivant and a heartthrob! Wait, do you remember the singer Sashenka Purgold, Dargomyzhsky’s student? She adored you, she just pursued you. I considered you a genius, almost a celestial being, devoid of shortcomings.

I know that all of you, led by Stasov, were gossiping that she was after me and dreamed of marrying me. Envious people!

Forgive me, Garbage Man, but I heard with my own ears how Sasha, after the premiere of Godunov at the Mariinsky, swore to you that she would name her son Boris - in honor of your great opera!

And since at that time she was already married to someone else and pregnant, she soon fulfilled her promise! - Mussorgsky remarked caustically. - But I’m an old bachelor, you know...

“I don’t know anything about you, Modinka,” Repin thought with a sigh. He was always amazed how, despite his openness and sociability, Mussorgsky managed to hide his relationships with women from everyone. Modya did it masterfully, leaving absolutely no traces.

Among friends there was a half-guess, half-gossip about how twenty-year-old Modya became interested in a tavern singer and secretly lived with her in a rented apartment - happily, but not for long. Until the sweetheart ran away with someone else, forcing Mussorgsky to suffer severely. And although Modya never, even when drunk, remembered her, Repin understood: if not this, then another story probably happened, because of which Mussorgsky, a warm and loving man, did not start a family and home.

The relationship with singer Daria Leonova was also a mystery to the composer’s friends. Lately she has been very protective of Modest, even settling him in her dacha. Throughout the summer of 1879, Musoryanin and Leonova traveled around the south of Russia with concerts, and Daria Mikhailovna performed “The Flea” that Mussorgsky had just composed - as if this little thing was written for her contralto, and not for bass. However, Leonova was much older than Modi, and also not free. So who knows, perhaps their connection is nothing more than friendship.

Repin recalled that two other ladies with whom Modest had a special relationship, Nadezhda Petrovna Opochinina and Maria Vasilievna Shilovskaya, were much older than him. But as the French say, “the heart has no wrinkles”... The Opochinins were friends and distant relatives of Modi. He settled with them in the Engineering Castle for three whole years, when Kitosha got married and left St. Petersburg. Nadezhda Petrovna, a sensitive, intelligent, tasteful woman, loved to have endless conversations about lofty matters with Modest, who was eighteen years younger than her. Mussorgsky dedicated several romances to Nadezhda Petrovna, and on her death he wrote a poignant “Funeral Letter.” Repin saw how hard Modya was grieving the death of Opochinina. What is this if not love? However, is it important now...

As for Shilovskaya, Ilya Efimovich knew: she was a real femme fatal, one of the most beautiful and gifted women of her time, the owner of a divine soprano, a close friend of Dargomyzhsky and Glinka. Shilovskaya and Mussorgsky also have a big age difference. And although the flirtatious Maria Vasilyevna misled everyone, always shortening her years, Modya, no matter how young she was, was a boy for her, and Shilovskaya must have wounded the poor fellow too seriously when he opened his heart to her. Poor Garbage Man!

Repin involuntarily began to hum the romance that Mussorgsky dedicated to her:

What are your words of love?
You will call it nonsense.
What are my tears to you?
And you won't understand tears.
Leave me my dreams.
Not a word or a look
Warmth of the heart
Do not poison with poison.

Mussorgsky looked at Ilya Efimovich reproachfully: he was mercilessly out of tune. “Leave me your dreams...” - what’s the use of them? Is it really over? What a strange life you have lived!” - he wanted to sob, scream piercingly at the top of his voice, so that the damned thoughts would disappear from his head. But he just closed his eyes and asked the artist to continue tomorrow.

Repin came to the Nikolaev military hospital to paint a portrait of Mussorgsky three more times. He was not allowed into the next session... Modest Petrovich became much worse, he began to feel feverish and delirious. They said the reason was a bottle of cognac, which was secretly brought into the ward by a hospital attendant bribed by Garbage. Or maybe it's just time to leave this world. On the sixteenth of March Mussorgsky died.

A few days before, Pavel Tretyakov learned from Stasov that Repin had painted a brilliant portrait of the dying Mussorgsky, truly his best creation. He immediately sent the artist four hundred rubles for the painting. Repin did not take the money: “They are not mine, give them to the needs of the Garbage Man.” Or... spend it on his funeral."

The same Stasov told Ilya Efimovich that two days before Modi’s death, he and Daria Leonova brought to him Tertius Ivanovich Filippov, a major official and Slavophile known throughout Russia. Filippov often helped Mussorgsky with money, got him a job and did not allow him to be fired. An important document was signed in the hospital: Mussorgsky sold the copyrights to all his works to Filippov so that he would publish them.

City music school No. 2. Monument to M. P. Mussorgsky, Krivoy Rog

Terty Ivanovich donated a large sum for the composer's funeral. This money, together with Repin’s fee and the funds raised by friends, went towards the arrangement of Mussorgsky’s grave at the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Modest Petrovich was buried not far from the graves of his favorite composers - Dargomyzhsky and Glinka. The high relief portrait on the stone was made with the participation of Ilya Repin and sculptor Mark Antokolsky.

He was the youngest, fourth son in the family. The two eldest died one after another in infancy. All the tenderness of the mother, Yulia Ivanovna, a kind and gentle woman, was given to the remaining two, and especially to him, the youngest, Modinka. It was she who first began to teach him to play the old piano that stood in the hall of their wooden manor house.

But Mussorgsky's future was predetermined. At the age of ten, he and his older brother came to St. Petersburg, where he was supposed to enter a privileged military school - the School of Guards Ensigns.

After graduating from the School, Mussorgsky was assigned to the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment. Modest was seventeen years old. His duties were not onerous. Yes, the future smiled at him. But unexpectedly for everyone, Mussorgsky resigns and turns away from the path he had so successfully begun. True, this was unexpected only for those who knew only the external side of the life of this extraordinary person.

Not long before, one of the fellow Preobrazhenskys, who knew Dargomyzhsky, brought Mussorgsky to him. The young man immediately captivated the venerable musician not only with his piano playing, but also with his free improvisations. Dargomyzhsky highly appreciated his extraordinary musical abilities and introduced him to Balakirev and Cui. Thus began a new life for the young musician, in which Balakirev and the “Mighty Handful” circle took the main place.

Even then, in his youth, the future composer amazed everyone around him with the versatility of his interests, among which music and literature, philosophy and history took first place.

Mussorgsky was also distinguished by his democratic views and actions. This became especially evident after the peasant reform of 1861. In order to relieve his serfs from redemption payments, Modest Petrovich renounced his share of the inheritance in favor of his brother.

Soon the period of accumulation of knowledge gave way to a period of active creative activity. The composer decided to write an opera in which his passion for large folk scenes and for depicting a strong-willed personality would be embodied.

In search of a plot, Mussorgsky turned to Flaubert’s novel “Salammbô” from the history of ancient Carthage. One after another, beautiful, expressive musical themes were born in the composer’s head, especially for mass episodes. However, when the composer realized that the images he created were very far from the authentic, historical Carthage, he completely lost interest in his work.

Best of the day

The composer's passion for humor and ridicule could not have been more consistent with the nature of his other plans. On the advice of Dargomyzhsky, Mussorgsky began to write the opera “Marriage”. His task was new and previously unheard of, to write an opera based on the prose text of Gogol’s comedy.

All comrades regarded “Marriage” as a new, striking manifestation of Mussorgsky’s comedic talent and his ability to create interesting musical characteristics. But despite all this, it was clear that “Marriage” was nothing more than a fascinating experiment, and that this was not the path the development of a real opera should take. We must pay tribute to Mussorgsky; he himself was the first to realize this and did not continue the composition.

While visiting Lyudmila Ivanovna Shestakova, Glinka’s sister, Mussorgsky met Vladimir Vasilyevich Nikolsky. He was a philologist, literary critic, and specialist in the history of Russian literature. He drew Mussorgsky's attention to the tragedy "Boris Godunov". Nikolsky expressed the idea that this tragedy could become wonderful material for an opera libretto. These words made Mussorgsky think deeply. He immersed himself in reading Boris Godunov. The composer felt that an opera based on “Boris Godunov” could become a surprisingly multifaceted work.

By the end of 1869 the opera was completed. At the beginning of 1870, Mussorgsky received an envelope in the mail with a stamp from the director of the imperial theaters, Gedeonov. The composer was informed that the seven-member committee had rejected his opera. The new, second edition was created within a year. Now, instead of the previous seven scenes, the opera consisted of a prologue and four acts.

“Boris Godunov” turned out to be the first work in the history of world opera in which the fate of the people was shown with such depth, insight and truthfulness.

Mussorgsky dedicated his brainchild to his circle comrades. In the dedication, he unusually clearly expressed the main idea of ​​the opera: “I understand the people as a great personality, animated by a single idea. This is my task. I tried to resolve it in the opera."

Since the end of the opera in the new edition, a new phase of the struggle for its stage production has begun. The score was again presented to the theater committee and... again rejected. The actress Platonova helped, using her position as a prima donna at the Mariinsky Theater.

It is not difficult to imagine Mussorgsky's excitement, which intensified as the premiere approached. And now the long-awaited day has come. It turned into a genuine triumph, a triumph for the composer. The news of the new opera spread throughout the city with lightning speed, and all subsequent performances were held in full houses. It would seem that Mussorgsky could be quite happy.

However, an unexpectedly heavy blow fell on Mussorgsky from the side from which he least expected it. When in February 1874 a devastating review appeared in the St. Petersburg Gazette with the familiar signature “” (as Cui always signed), it was like a knife in the back.

Everything passes, and the excitement associated with the premiere of Boris, Cui's review and the noise raised around the opera by the press gradually subsided. Weekdays have come again. Again, day after day, going to the Forestry Department (he now worked in the investigative department), preparing “cases” of several thousand sheets each. And for myself - new creative plans, new works. Life seemed to return to its previous rut. Alas, instead the last and darkest period of ere life began.

There were many reasons for this - internal and external. And, above all, the collapse of the “Mighty Handful,” which Mussorgsky perceived as a betrayal of old ideals.

The vicious attacks of the reactionary press also seriously wounded Mussorgsky and darkened the last years of his life. In addition, performances of “Boris Godunov” were performed less and less often, although public interest in them did not decline. And finally, the death of close friends. In the early 1870s, one of them, the artist Hartmann, died. A woman dearly loved by Mussorgsky, whose name he always hid, has died. Only his numerous works dedicated to her, and the “Funeral Letter” addressed to her, found after the composer’s death, give an idea of ​​the depth of his feelings and help to understand the immensity of the suffering caused by the death of a dear person. New friends also appeared. He met the young poet Count Arseny Arkadyevich Golenishchev-Kutuzov and became very attached to him. And how amazing, enthusiastic and restless this friendship was! As if Mussorgsky wanted to use it to reward himself for the losses and disappointments he had suffered. The best of Mussorgsky's vocal works of the 1870s were written to the words of Golenishchev-Kutuzov. But relations with Kutuzov also brought bitter disappointments. A year and a half after the start of their friendship, Arseny announced that he was going to get married. For Mussorgsky this was a blow.

Under the influence of difficult experiences, Mussorgsky’s craving for wine, which had manifested itself during his years at the cadet school, resumed. He had changed in appearance and was bloated; he was no longer as impeccably dressed as he once was. There were troubles at work; more than once he was left without a place, was in constant need of money, and was once even expelled from the apartment he occupied for non-payment. His health was deteriorating.

However, it was during this period that recognition came to him abroad. The “Great Old Man” Franz Liszt, having received from his publisher the sheet music of works by Russian composers, was amazed by the novelty and talent of these works. Particularly enthusiastic was Mussorgsky's "Children's Room" - a cycle of songs in which the composer reproduced the world of a child's soul. This music shocked the great maestro.

Despite the appalling conditions, Mussorgsky experienced a genuine creative rise during these years. Much of what was conceived by the composer remained unfinished or not entirely realized. But what was created during these years proves that Mussorgsky reached a new peak of creativity.

The first work that appeared after “Boris Godunov,” in the year of its first production, was the suite “Pictures at an Exhibition.” When, after Hartmann's death, Stasov organized an exhibition of his works in St. Petersburg, Mussorgsky, inspired by it, wrote a suite and dedicated it to the memory of his deceased friend.

This is the largest and most significant of all the works for piano composed by Mussorgsky. The composer transferred his amazing art of drawing real life scenes in sounds, recreating the appearance of living people, this time into the field of piano music, opening up completely new colorful and expressive possibilities of the instrument.

Mussorgsky thought about the further development of the principles of Pushkin’s multifaceted dramaturgy. In his imagination, an opera was pictured, the content of which would cover the life of an entire state, with many pictures and episodes depicting what was happening at the same time.

There was no literary work that could serve as the basis for the libretto of such a broadly conceived opera, and Mussorgsky decided to compose the plot himself.

“Khovanshchina” became a new, highest stage in the development of Mussorgsky’s musical language. He still considered speech the main means of expressing human feelings and characters. But he now put into the concept of musical speech a broader and deeper meaning than it once included both recitative and song melody, through which alone the deepest, most significant feelings can be expressed.

In parallel with Khovanshchina, Mussorgsky composed another opera. It was the “Sorochinskaya Fair” according to Gogol. This opera testifies to Mussorgsky's inexhaustible love for life, despite any suffering, and his attraction to simple human joy.

While working on “Khovanshchina”, “Sorochinskaya Fair” and songs, Mussorgsky was simultaneously dreaming about the future. He was planning a third folk musical drama - about the Pugachev uprising, which, together with Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, would form a kind of trilogy on themes from Russian history.

But this dream was not allowed to come true, just as Mussorgsky did not have to finish Khovanshchina and Sorochinsky Fair.

The last years of his life were uneventful. Mussorgsky no longer served. A group of people, having formed, paid him something like a small pension. The composer had to receive it until the end of the operas. He performed a lot during this period as a pianist-accompanist. In 1879 he went on a concert tour of Ukraine and Crimea. This trip was the last shake-up, the last bright event in Mussorgsky's life.

In the winter of 1881, the first blow overtook him. Others followed. On March 28, 1881, Mussorgsky passed away. He was barely 42 years old.

World fame came to him posthumously. Soon after his death, Rimsky-Korsakov took upon himself the great task of completing Khovanshchina and putting in order all the remaining manuscripts of the deceased. “Khovanshchina” was staged for the first time in Rimsky-Korsakov’s edition. In the same edition, other works of Mussorgsky went around the world.

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Mussorgsky is a brilliant composer whose work was initially underestimated. An innovator, a seeker of new paths in music, he seemed to his contemporaries to be a dropout. Even his close friend Rimsky-Korsakov believed that Mussorgsky's works could only be performed by correcting the harmony, form and orchestration, and after Mussorgsky's untimely death he carried out this enormous work. It was in Rimsky-Korsakov’s versions that many of Mussorgsky’s works were known for a long time, including the operas “Boris Godunov” and “Khovanshchina”. Only much later was the true significance of Mussorgsky’s work revealed, whom Stasov was the first to correctly appreciate, saying: “Mussorgsky is one of the people to whom posterity erects monuments.” His music had a strong influence on composers of the 20th century, in particular French, not to mention Russian, among whom the largest were Prokofiev and Shostakovich. “To create a living person in living music”, “To create a life phenomenon or type in a form inherent to them, which has not been seen before by any of the artists” - this is how the composer himself defined his goal. The nature of his work determined Mussorgsky's primary appeal to vocal and stage genres. His highest achievements are the operas "Boris Godunov" and "Khovanshchina", the vocal cycles "Children's", "Without the Sun" and "Songs and Dances of Death".

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was born on March 9 (21), 1839 on the Karevo estate near the town of Toroptsa, Pskov province, into an old noble family that traces its ancestry to the Rurikovichs - the descendants of the legendary Rurik, who was called to reign over Rus' from the Varangians. From early childhood, like all noble children, he studied French and German, as well as music, showing great success, especially in improvisation. At the age of 9, he was already playing a concerto by J. Field, but, of course, there was no talk of professional music studies. In 1849 he was sent to St. Petersburg, where after three years of training he entered the School of Guards Ensigns. These three years were not lost on music - the boy took piano lessons from one of the best teachers in the capital, A. Gerke, a student of the famous Field. In 1856, Mussorgsky graduated from school and was assigned to serve in the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment. During one of his duties at a military land hospital, he met Borodin, then a doctor at the same hospital. But this acquaintance did not yet lead to friendship: their ages, interests, and the environment surrounding each of them were too different.

Lively interested in music and eager to become more familiar with the works of Russian composers, Mussorgsky at the age of 18 ended up in Dargomyzhsky’s house. Under the influence of the prevailing situation there, he begins to compose. The first experiments were the romance “Where are you, little star”, the idea of ​​the opera “Gan the Icelander”. At Dargomyzhsky's he meets Cui and Balakirev. This last acquaintance has a decisive impact on his entire future life. It was with Balakirev, around whom a circle of musicians formed, which later became famous under the name of the Mighty Handful, that his composition studies began. During the first year, several romances and piano sonatas appeared. Creativity captivates the young man so much that in 1858 he resigns and selflessly engages in self-education - psychology, philosophy, literature - and tries himself in various musical genres. And although he still composes in small forms, he is most attracted to opera, in particular, the plot of “Oedipus”. On the advice of Balakirev, in 1861-1862 he wrote a symphony, but left it unfinished. But the next year he was captivated by the plot of “Salammbô” based on Flaubert’s novel, which had just been published in Russian translation. He has been working on the opera “Salambo” for about three years and creates many interesting fragments, but gradually realizes that it is not the East, but Rus' that attracts him. And “Salambo” also remains unfinished.

In the mid-60s, Mussorgsky's works appeared, clearly showing which path he decided to follow. These are the songs “Kalistrat” based on Nekrasov’s poems about the difficult peasant lot (the composer called “Kalistrat” a sketch in the folk style), “Sleep, sleep, peasant son” in the spirit of folk songs based on the text from A. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Voevoda”, an everyday picture “ Svetik Savvishna” in his own words. After listening to the latter, the famous composer and authoritative music critic A. Serov said: “A terrible scene. This is Shakespeare in music." Somewhat later, “Seminarist” appears, also based on his own text. In 1863, the need arises to earn a living - the family estate is completely destroyed and no longer brings in any income. Mussorgsky enters the service: in December he becomes an official of the Engineering Directorate.

In 1867, the first major orchestral work was finally created - “ Midsummer Night on Bald Mountain”. At the same time, under the influence of Dargomyzhsky’s “The Stone Guest,” Mussorgsky began work on the opera “Marriage” based on the prose text of Gogol’s comedy. This bold idea fascinates him very much, but after a while it becomes clear that this is only an experiment: he does not consider it possible to create an opera based on one recitative, without arias, choirs, and ensembles.

The 60s were a time of fierce struggle between the Balakirev circle and the so-called conservative party, to which belonged the professors of the recently opened first Russian conservatory, supported by Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna. Balakirev, who was for some time the director of the Russian Musical Society (RMS), was dismissed from his position in 1869. In opposition to this institution, he organizes a series of concerts of the Free Music School, but the fight is obviously lost, since, unlike the RMS, the BMS is not subsidized by anyone. Mussorgsky gets excited about the idea of ​​embodying the opponents of the Mighty Handful in music. This is how “Rayok” appears - a unique satirical vocal composition, according to Stasov, a masterpiece of “talent, causticity, comedy, ridicule, brilliance, plasticity... Even those who were ridiculed laughed to tears, so talented and infectiously cheerful, this original novelty was funny” .

The composer devoted the years 1868-1869 to working on “Boris Godunov”, and in 1870 he presented the score to the Mariinsky Theater. But the opera is rejected: it is too unconventional. One of the reasons for the refusal was the lack of a major female role. The following years, 1871 and 1872, the composer reworks “Boris”: Polish scenes and the role of Marina Mniszech appear, the scene near Kromy. But even this option does not satisfy the committee in charge of accepting operas for production. Only the persistence of singer Y. Platonova, who chose Mussorgsky’s opera for her benefit performance, helps “Boris Godunov” to see the spotlight. While working on the second edition of the opera, Mussorgsky rented an apartment together with Rimsky-Korsakov. They share time at the piano in a friendly manner, both write operas based on a plot from Russian history (Rimsky-Korsakov creates “The Woman of Pskov”) and, very different in character and creative principles, perfectly complement each other.

In 1873, “Children’s”, designed by Repin, was published and received wide recognition from both the public and musicians, including Liszt, who highly appreciated the novelty and unusualness of this work. This is the only joy of a composer who is not spoiled by fate. He is depressed by the endless troubles associated with the production of “Boris Godunov”, and is tired of the need to serve, now in the Forestry Department. Loneliness is also depressing: Rimsky-Korsakov got married and moved out of their shared apartment, and Mussorgsky, partly by his own conviction, partly under the influence of Stasov, believes that marriage will interfere with creativity and sacrifices his personal life for it. Stasov is traveling abroad for a long time. Soon, the composer's friend, artist Victor Hartmann, dies suddenly.

The next year brings both great creative success - the piano cycle "Pictures at an Exhibition", created under the direct impression of Hartmann's posthumous exhibition, and a new great sorrow. The composer's longtime friend Nadezhda Petrovna Opochinina, with whom he apparently was deeply but secretly in love, dies. At this time, a gloomy, melancholy cycle “Without the Sun” was created based on the poems of Golenishchev-Kutuzov. Work is also underway on a new opera - “Khovanshchina” - again based on a plot from Russian history. In the summer of 1874, work on the opera was interrupted for the sake of “Sorochinsk Fair” based on Gogol. The comic opera is progressing with difficulty: there are too few reasons for fun. But an inspired vocal ballad “Forgotten” appears based on a painting by Vereshchagin, which he saw at an exhibition in the same 1874.

The composer's life becomes more and more difficult and hopeless. The actual disintegration of the Mighty Handful, which he repeatedly complains about in letters to Stasov, has a heavy impact on him, who has always strived for close friendly communication. People in his service are dissatisfied with him: he often skimps on his duties, both for the sake of creativity, and, unfortunately, because, under the influence of sad life circumstances, he increasingly resorts to the generally accepted Russian consolation - the bottle. Sometimes his need becomes so strong that he does not have the money to pay rent. In 1875 he was evicted for non-payment. For some time he finds refuge with A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, then with an old friend, Naumov, a former naval officer, a big fan of his work. Based on the poems of Golenishchev-Kutuzov, he creates the vocal cycle “Songs and Dances of Death”.

In 1878, friends helped Mussorgsky find another position - junior auditor of the State Audit Office. It is good because the composer’s immediate boss, T. Filippov, a great lover of music and a collector of folk songs, turns a blind eye to Mussorgsky’s absenteeism. But the meager salary barely allows him to make ends meet. In 1879, in order to improve his financial situation, Mussorgsky, together with the singer D. Leonova, went on a large tour that covered all the major cities of southern Russia. The program of performances includes arias from operas by Russian composers, romances by both Russian composers and Schubert, Schumann, Liszt. Mussorgsky accompanies the singer and also performs solo numbers - transcriptions from “Ruslan and Lyudmila” and his own operas. The trip has a beneficial effect on the musician. He is inspired by the beautiful southern nature, rave reviews from newspapers, which highly appreciate his gift as a composer and pianist. This causes uplift and new creative activity. The famous song “The Flea”, piano pieces, and the idea of ​​a large suite for orchestra appear. Work continues on “Sorochinskaya Fair” and “Khovanshchina”.

In January of the following year, Mussorgsky finally left public service. Friends - V. Zhemchuzhnikov, T. Filippov, V. Stasov and M. Ostrovsky (the playwright's brother) - contribute to a monthly stipend of 100 rubles so that he can finish Khovanshchina. Another group of friends pays 80 rubles a month under the obligation to complete the Sorochinsky Fair. Thanks to this help, in the summer of 1880, “Khovanshchina” was almost completed in the clavier. Since the fall, Mussorgsky, at the suggestion of Leonova, has become an accompanist at her private singing courses and, in addition to accompaniment, composes choirs for students based on Russian folk texts. But his health is completely undermined, and at one of his home student concerts he loses consciousness. Stasov, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin arrived and found him delirious. Urgent hospitalization is required. Through a friend of the doctor L. Bertenson, who worked at the Nikolaev military hospital, Mussorgsky managed to get hired there, signing him up as “a civilian orderly for resident Bertenson.” On February 14, 1881, the unconscious composer was taken to the hospital. For a while he gets better, he can even receive visitors, among them Repin, who painted the famous portrait of Mussorgsky. But soon there is a sharp deterioration in the condition.

Mussorgsky died on March 16, only 42 years old. The funeral took place on March 18 at the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In 1885, through the efforts of faithful friends, a monument was erected at the grave.

L. Mikheeva

Key dates of life and work:

1839. - 9 III. In the village of Karevo, a son, Modest, was born into the Mussorgsky family - landowner Pyotr Alekseevich and his wife Yulia Ivanovna (nee Chirikova).

1846. - First successes in learning to play the piano under the guidance of his mother.

1848. - Mussorgsky's performance of J. Field's concerto (at his parents' house for guests).

1849. - VIII. Admission to the Peter and Paul School in St. Petersburg. - Start of piano lessons with Ant. A. Gehrke.

1851. - Mussorgsky's performance of A. Hertz's "Rondo" at a home charity concert.

1852. - VIII. Admission to the school of guards ensigns. - Publication of the piano piece - polka "Ensign" ("Porte-enseigne Polka").

1856. - 17 VI. Graduation from the School of Guards Ensigns. - 8 X. Enrollment in the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment. - X. Meeting with A.P. Borodin on duty at the 2nd land hospital. - Winter 1856-1857. Meeting A. S. Dargomyzhsky.

1857. - Acquaintance with T. A. Cui and M. A. Balakirev in the house of Dargomyzhsky, with V. V. and D. V. Stasov in the house of M. A. Balakirev. - Start of composition classes under the guidance of Balakirev.

1858. - 11 VI. Retirement from military service.

1859. - 22 II. Mussorgsky's performance of the main role in the comic opera "The Son of a Mandarin" by Cui in the author's house. - VI. A trip to Moscow, getting to know its sights.

1860. - 11 I. Performance of a scherzo in B-dur in a concert of the RMO under the baton of A. G. Rubinstein.

1861. - I. A trip to Moscow, new acquaintances in the circles of advanced intelligentsia (youth). - 6 IV. Performance by the choir from the music to the tragedy "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles in a concert conducted by K. N. Lyadov (Mariinsky Theatre).

1863. - VI-VII. Stay in Toropets due to concerns about the estate. - XII. The concept of the opera "Salammbô" based on the novel by G. Flaubert. - 15 XII. Entering the service (as an official) in the Engineering Department.

1863-65. - Life in a “commune” with a group of young friends (under the influence of the novel “What is to be done?” by N. G. Chernyshevsky).

1864. - 22 V. Creation of the song "Kalistrat" ​​based on the words of N. A. Nekrasov - the first in a series of vocal scenes from folk life.

1866. - The beginning of friendship with N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov.

1867. - 6 III. Performance of the choir "The Defeat of Sennacherib" in a concert of the Free Music School under the direction of Balakirev. - 26 IV. Leaving service in the Engineering Department. - 24 IX. Complaints about the difficult financial situation in a letter to Balakirev.

1868. - Getting closer to the Purgold family, participating in their home musical gatherings. - 23 IX. Screening of "Marriage" at Cui's house. - Meeting the literary historian V.V. Nikolsky, starting work on “Boris Godunov” on his advice. - 21 XII. Enrollment in the Forestry Department of the Ministry of State Property.

1870. - 7 V. Display of "Boris Godunov" in the house of the artist K. E. Makovsky. - Prohibition of the song “Seminarist” by censorship.

1871. - 10 II. The Opera Committee of the Mariinsky Theater rejected the opera "Boris Godunov".

1871-72. - Mussorgsky lives in the same apartment with Rimsky-Korsakov, working on the 2nd edition of Boris Godunov.

1872. - 8 II. Performance of the opera "Boris Godunov" in a new edition in the house of V. F. Purgold. - 5 II. Performance of the finale of the 1st movement of "Boris Godunov" at the RMO concert under the direction of E. F. Napravnik. - II-IV. Collective work (together with Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Cui) on the opera-ballet "Mlada" commissioned by the directorate of the imperial theaters. - 3 IV. Performance of a polonaise from "Boris Godunov" in a concert of the Free Music School conducted by Balakirev. - VI. Start of work on "Khovanshchina".

1873. - 5 II. Performance of three scenes from "Boris Godunov" at the Mariinsky Theater. - V. Performance by F. Liszt in Weimar for a group of musicians of the "Children's" cycle by M.

1874. - 27 I. Premiere of "Boris Godunov" at the Mariinsky Theater. - 7-19 V. Creation of a ballad for voice and piano “Forgotten” to the words of Golenishchev-Kutuzov, dedicated to V.V. Vereshchagin. - VII. The origin of the concept of the opera "Sorochinskaya Fair".

1875. - 13 II. Mussorgsky's participation as an accompanist in a concert in favor of needy students of the Medical-Surgical Academy. - 9 III. Participation in the musical and literary evening of the St. Petersburg Society to benefit students of medical and pedagogical courses.

1876. - 11 III. Participation in the musical evening of the St. Petersburg meeting of artists in favor of needy students of the Medical-Surgical Academy.

1877. - 17 II. Participation in the concert of Yu. F. Platonova. - Participation in a concert in favor of the Society of Cheap Apartments.

1878. - 2 IV. Performance with singer D. M. Leonova at the concert of the Society for Benefits for Students of Women's Medical and Pedagogical Courses. - 10 XII. Resumption of "Boris Godunov" (with large bills) at the Mariinsky Theater.

1879. - 16 I. Performing the scene in the cell from "Boris Godunov" in a concert of the Free Music School conducted by Rimsky-Korsakov (staged by the Mariinsky Theater and released). - 3 IV. Participation in the concert of the Society for Benefits for Students of Women's Medical and Pedagogical Courses. - VII-X. Concert trip with Leonova (Poltava, Elizavetgrad, Kherson, Odessa, Sevastopol, Yalta, Rostov-on-Don, Novocherkassk, Voronezh, Tambov, Tver). - 27 November Performing excerpts from “Khovanshchina” in a concert of the Free Music School conducted by Rimsky-Korsakov.

1880. - I. Leaving service. Deterioration of health. - 8 IV. Performing excerpts from “Khovanshchina” and “Song of the Flea” in Leonova’s concert with an orchestra conducted by Rimsky-Korsakov. - 27 and 30 IV. Two concerts by Leonova and Mussorgsky in Tver. - 5 VIII. Message in a letter to Stasov about the end of “Khovanshchina” (with the exception of small passages in the last act).

1881. - II. A sharp deterioration in health. - 2-5 III. I. E. Repin paints a portrait of Mussorgsky - 16 III. Death of Mussorgsky in the Nikolaev military hospital from erysipelas of the leg. - 18 III. Funeral of Mussorgsky at the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.

Outstanding Russian composer, member of the “Mighty Handful”.

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was born on March 9 (21), 1839 in the village of Toropetsk district of the Pskov province (now in) in the family of a retired collegiate secretary P. A. Mussorgsky, a representative of an old noble family.

The future composer spent his childhood on his parents' estate, the village. In 1845 he began to study music under the guidance of his mother.

In 1849-1852, M. P. Mussorgsky studied at the German Peter and Paul School in, in 1852-1856 - at the School of Guards Ensigns. At the same time, he took music lessons from pianist A. A. Gerke. In 1852, the composer's first work was published - the polka for piano "Ensign".

Upon completion of his studies in 1856, M. P. Mussorgsky was enlisted in the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment. In 1856-1857, he met composers A. S. Dargomyzhsky, M. A. Balakirev and critic V. V. Stasov, who had a profound influence on his general and musical development. M.P. Mussorgsky began to seriously study composition under the guidance of M.A. Balakirev, entered the “Mighty Handful” circle. Having decided to devote himself to music, he left military service in 1858.

The ruin of the family caused by the abolition of serfdom in 1861 forced M. P. Mussorgsky to enter the civil service. In 1863-1867 he was an official of the Main Engineering Directorate, from 1869 to 1880 he served in the Forestry Department of the Ministry of State Property and in the State Audit Office.

In the late 1850s and early 1860s, M. P. Mussorgsky wrote a number of romances and instrumental works, in which the peculiar features of his creative individuality were revealed. In 1863-1866 he worked on the opera “Salammbô” (based on G. Flaubert), which remained unfinished. In the mid-1860s, the composer turned to current, socially sensitive themes: he created songs and romances based on words by T. G. Shevchenko, and on his own texts (“Kalistrat”, “Eremushki’s Lullaby”, “Sleep, Sleep, Peasant son”, “Orphan”, “Seminarist”, etc.), in which his ability to create vividly characteristic human images was demonstrated. The symphonic painting “Night on Bald Mountain” (1867), created based on folk tales and legends, is distinguished by the richness and richness of its sound colors. A bold experiment was the unfinished opera by M. P. Mussorgsky “Marriage” (after, 1868), the vocal parts of which are based on the direct implementation of the intonations of live conversational speech.

The works of the 1850-1860s prepared M. P. Mussorgsky for the creation of one of his main works - the opera “Boris Godunov” (after). The first edition of the opera (1869) was not accepted for production by the directorate of the imperial theaters. After reworking, Boris Godunov was staged at the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Theater (1874), but with large cuts.

In the 1870s, M. P. Mussorgsky worked on the grandiose “folk musical drama” from the era of the Streltsy riots of the late 17th century, “Khovanshchina” (libretto by M. P. Mussorgsky, begun in 1872) and the comic opera “Sorochinskaya Fair” ( by , 1874-1880). At the same time, the composer created the vocal cycles “Without the Sun” (1874), “Songs and Dances of Death” (1875-1877), and the piano suite “Pictures at an Exhibition” (1874).

In the last years of his life, M. P. Mussorgsky experienced severe depression caused by lack of recognition of his work, loneliness, and everyday and financial difficulties. He died on March 16 (28), 1881 in the Nikolaev Soldiers' Hospital and was buried in the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

The opera “Khovanshchina”, unfinished by M. P. Mussorgsky, was completed after his death; A. K. Lyadov, T. A. Cui and others worked on “Sorochinskaya Fair”. In 1896, a new edition of “Boris Godunov” was made. In 1959, D. D. Shostakovich prepared a new edition and orchestration of “Boris Godunov” and “Khovanshchina”. An independent version of the completion of the “Sorochinskaya Fair” belongs to the Soviet composer V. Ya. Shebalin (1930).

M. P. Mussorgsky managed to create a deeply original, expressive musical language, distinguished by acute realistic character, subtlety and variety of psychological shades. His work had a great influence on many domestic and foreign composers: S. S. Prokofiev, D. D. Shostakovich, L. Janacek, C. Debussy and others.