This is not only the first life-and-works on Musorgsky in English for over half a century but also the largest such study of the composer ever to have appeared outside Russia. Mussorgsky was one of the towering figures of nineteenth century Russian music - but also one of the most tragic. Largely an amateur with no systematic training in composition, he nevertheless emerged in his first opera, Boris Godunov, as a supreme musical dramatist, presenting here
(and in certain of his piano pieces in Pictures at an Exhibition) some of the most startlingly original of all song composers, with a prodigious gift for uncovering the emotional content of a text. His failure to complete his two remaining operas, Khovanshchina and Sorochintsy Fair, before his premature death
from alcohol poisoning is one of music's greatest tragedies.
- ISBN10 0198165870
- ISBN13 9780198165873
- Publish Date 30 January 2003
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 17 May 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 410
- Language English