Musorgsky

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.