“...one of the most
amazingly prophetic,
provocative and original
creations of
musical literature.”
One year after the completion of Borts Godunov in 1872, Mous-
sorgsky suffered the loss of his dearest friend, the architect and
painter Victor Hartmann. This gifted and versatile man’s untimely
death at the age of 39 moved his admirers to promote a memorial
exhibition of his drawings, architectural designs and water colors
early in 1874.
This was the occasion that inspired Moussorgsky to the creation
of the only piano work of major importance to emerge from
Russia’s famous nationalistic group known as the “Five’—Bala-
kireff, Borodin, Cui, Rimsky-Korsakoff and Moussorgsky, who
was the boldest and most visionary genius of the charmed circle.
The birth of Pictures at an Exhibition was announced in a letter
from the composer to Vladimir Stassoff, the celebrated Russian
writer on music and art, to whom Moussorgsky dedicated it.
“My dear Generalissimo,” wrote the composer, “Hartmann is
boiling as Boris boiled... . I can hardly manage to scribble it all
down on paper .. . give me your blessing!” The very next morn-
ing the manuscript arrived, complete to the inscription: “Fo you
... organizer of the Hartmann exhibition, in memory of our dear
Victor, 7 July, 1874.”
Before attempting to describe this unique work, it is necessary
to acknowledge the invaluable service rendered by the American
critic Alfred Frankenstein, whose precise research has provided
information and insights relating to both the pictures and their
tonal translations that would be hard to overpraise. Working from
photostatic copies of the itemized catalog of the exhibition and
from photographic prints of sketches that prompted several im-
portant movements of Moussorgsky’s composition, Frankenstein
has enabled us to avoid numerous misconceptions that have sur-
rounded the work since its publication in 1886, five years after
Moussorgsky’s death.
Perhaps the most pertinent disclosure, to those whose primary
concern is the music itself, also constitutes a firm answer to critics
who reproached the composer for his “frequent inattention to his
pictorial subject matter.” The point, evidently, is that the pictures
are indeed very far from what the fanciful and powerful music
might entice us to expect; they are extremely conventional and
rather stilted, even banal. Moussorgsky obviously looked upon
them with the warm eye, the sympathetic indulgence and the un-
critical leniency of nostalgic friendship. Certainly, they stirred his
imagination to one of the most amazingly prophetic, provocative
and original creations of musical literature.
als work opens with a Promenade. Its recurrence in various
shapes and lengths, its inconsistent and uneven pace, its heavy,
Slavic tread, all turn out to be strokes of autobiographical genius,
for Moussorgsky has painted a series of self-portraits. We see him
walking from picture to picture, sometimes slowly, sometimes
briskly, sometimes not at all when one picture hangs right next to
another, sometimes pausing reflectively, and always fascinated,
always responsive. Then follows
Gnomus. This picture represents a grotesque, crooked-legged
little gnome, his clumsy movements accompanied by savage shrieks,
screeches and grunts. A shortened version of the Promenade
leads to
The Old Castle. Although no such item occurs in the catalog,
Frankenstein tells us that the original title in Italian suggests some
architectural water colors that Hartmann did in Italy. Stassoff ex-
plains the marvelous movement as a depiction of “a medieval
castle, before which stands a singing troubadour.” The Promenade
is repeated at a plodding pace to provide a startling and stunning
contrast to the animated and capricious
Tuileries. The famous Parisian gardens are swarming with
children and harassed nurses trying to control their young charges
who have fallen to quarreling after their games. Immediately,
there follows
Bydlo. An old oxcart with tremendous wheels approaches slowly,
lumbers past and disappears into the distance. The driver intones a
mournful folk song. A brief, quiescent statement of the Promenade
leads into the
Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells. Hartmann’s sketches for
a scene in the ballet Trz/oy are delineated in a joyous little jeu
d’esprit, full of cheerful chirps and squeaks as the chicks emerge
from darkness into sunlight.
The next picture, which in most editions is entitled Samuel
Goldenberg and Schmuyle, has no title at all on Moussorgsky’s
manuscript. However, Hartmann’s exhibition listed two drawings —
“loaned by Moussorgsky,” one called “A rich Jew wearing a fur hat:
Sandomir,” the other, “A poor Sandomir Jew.” They resulted in one
of the most brilliant and malicious caricatures in all music. The
musical picture of the comfortable, arrogant, stingy Jew, and of his
whining, obsequious, pleading-in-vain companion, is uniquely and
venomously etched.
A Promenade at this point appears only in the original manu-
script, for it has been omitted by every editor and also by Ravel,
the arch-orchestrator of this masterpiece that virtually cried out for
instrumentation. Next we hear
The Market Place at Limoges. Seventy-five Hartmann sketches
of this celebrated locale appear in the catalog, but none refers to
the market place. Moussorgsky invented a group of haggling women
in. furious disputes that lead to a free-for-all. A dramatic pause,
and then a frightened flurry suggests the arrival of gendarmes.
Catacombs. The drawing is a self-portrait, viewing the interior
of the Paris catacombs by the light of a lantern—“the skulls,” in
Moussorgsky’s words, are “gently illuminated from within.” The
music casts mystic shadows of strange harmonic shapes. The
Promenade theme appears under the title Con Mortuis in Lingua
Mortua—a solemn, ghostly tribute “to the creative spirit of
Hartmann.”
The Hut on Fowl’s Legs. This picture and the music that rep-
resents it concerns’a legendary -witch, Baba Yaga, who pursues her
victims from a curious habitat, from which she flies in a mortar.
The Great Gate of Kiev. Hartmann made six sketches for a
projected gate in heroic style and historic design. The project itself
never materialized, but the drawings inspired this processional
finale of unprecedented Eastern splendor, pageantry and chordal
magnificence amidst a majestic fanfare of pealing bells.
bee legends surround Rachmaninoff’s very first Prelude,
including the false one that its composer hated it. He didn’t. He
merely resented its overwhelming fame above other works. Never-
theless, its persistent popularity is solidly merited on its dramatic
power and masterly utilization of the full resources of the piano.
The Prokofieff Toccata that concludes this record is not only a
perpetual-motion piece of prodigious vitality and difficulty, but
also a highly original tour de force that ends in triumphant fury.
—ABRAM CHASINS
Author, pianist and composer
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