01/15/2025
Did you know?
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (March 21, 1839 – March 28, 1881 Karevo, Russia) was a member of “The Mighty Five”, a group of prominent 19th-century Russian composers (Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, and Mussorgsky) who lived in Saint Petersburg and collaborated from 1856 to 1870.
Originally composed as a piano suite in ten movements, "Pictures at an Exhibition" is a musical depiction of a tour of visual art works by Mussorgsky’s friend, the architect and painter Viktor Hartmann. Music for Hartmann’s illustrations represented chicks, children, Baba Yaga in her wooden house on chicken legs, catacombs, gates, and even rattling carts. The fact that Mussorgsky composed these themes seriously, and not jokingly, was considered radical.
When you attend our "Masterworks III - Pictures at an Exhibition" concerts, listen and imagine Mussorgsky's reflections on Hartmann's works:
👣 Promenade – Mussorgsky depicts himself roving through the exhibition
⭐ Gnomus – According to Stassov, this represents “a child’s plaything, fashioned, after Hartmann’s design in wood, for the Christmas tree at the Artists’ Club. . . . It is something in the style of the fabled Nutcracker, the nuts being inserted into the gnome’s mouth. The gnome accompanies his droll movements with savage shrieks.”
🏰 Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle) – There was no item by this title in the exhibition, but it presumably refers to one of several architectural watercolors done on a trip of Hartmann’s to Italy. Stassov notes that the piece represents a medieval castle with a troubadour standing before it.
🌳 Tuileries – The park in Paris, swarming with children and their nurses. Mussorgsky reaches this picture by way of a Promenade.
🐂 Bydlo – The word is Polish for “cattle.” Mussorgsky explained to Stassov that the picture represents an ox‑drawn wagon with enormous wheels, but added that “the wagon is not inscribed on the music; that is purely between us.”
🐣 Ballet of Chicks in Their Shells – In this scene, child dancers portray canaries “enclosed in eggs as in suits of armor, with canary heads put on like helmets.” The Ballet is preceded by a short Promenade.
⭐ Samuel Goldenberg and Shmuel – Mussorgsky owned two drawings by Hartmann entitled A Rich Jew Wearing a Fur Hat and A Poor Jew: Sandomierz. Hartmann had spent a month of 1868 at Sandomierz in Poland. Mussorgsky’s manuscript has no title, and Stassov provided one, Two Polish Jews, One Rich, One Poor; he seems later to have added the names of Goldenberg and Shmuel.
⭐ The Marketplace at Limoges – Mussorgsky jots some imagined conversation in the margin of the manuscript: “Great news! M. de Puissangeout has just recovered his cow. . . . Mme. de Remboursac has just acquired a beautiful new set of teeth, while M. de Pantaleon’s nose, which is in his way, is as much as ever the color of a peony.”
💀 The Catacombae – The picture shows the interior of a catacomb in Paris with Hartmann, a friend, and a guide with a lamp. The music falls into two sections, Sepulcrum romanum (Roman Sepulchers) and Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (With the Dead in a Dead Language), a ghostly transformation of the Promenade.
🧙 The Hut on Fowls’ Legs – A clock in fourteenth‑century style, in the shape of a hut with cocks’ heads and on chicken legs, done in metal. Mussorgsky associated this with the witch Baba Yaga, who flew about in a mortar in chase of her victims.
🗝️ The Great Gate of Kiev – A design for a series of stone gates that were to have replaced the wooden city gates, to commemorate the April 4, 1886 escape of Tsar Alexander II from assassination.
Please be sure to experience the artwork of students from APEXArts and ArtFarm Studios, which reflects Mussorgsky's masterpiece. An exhibition is open at Anne Arundel County Public Library through January 28 and then at Maryland Hall through February 8th.
🎟️ If you're an A*O subscriber, please use your subscriber 20% Friends and Family discount benefit for tickets to the concerts!
🎨 art by John C, created in the Art Farm Studios "Pictures at an Exhibition" workshop.
