Mussorgsky’s Opera Boris Godunov
First of two music-themed posts. The next post is on Mozart’s Opera The Marriage of Figaro.
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
Mussorgsky’s life and musical circle
The little known about Mussorgsky’s early life is based on an unreliable autobiography he wrote in 1880 just before his death. He was born in 1839 in Karevo, 400 kilometers south of Saint Petersburg, into a wealthy land-owning family. He displayed an early talent for the piano and gave public performances. The family moved to Saint Petersburg to allow Mussorgsky’s musical education under the renowned pianist Anton Gerke. At thirteen he joined the Imperial Guard cadets and at seventeen the Russian Imperial regiment. Alongside his military career, Mussorgsky associated with some of the leading composers in Saint Petersburg in the period 1856 to 1870 - Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin – who with Mussorgsky himself are often referred to as the ‘Moscow Five’ or the New Russian School. Due to chronic alcoholism, Mussorgsky died at forty-two having completed relatively few works. As well as Boris Godunov, Mussorgsky wrote a series of tone poems, Night on Bare Mountain (1867), which were orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1886 and appeared in the Disney film Fantasia, a number of song cycles (1864-1866), two unfinished operas and ten pieces for piano Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), which were notably arranged2 for orchestra in 1922 by Maurice Ravel.
Mussorgsky the realist
Mussorgsky is reported to have said: ‘Art should aim at the depiction of life in all its manifestations, should go for point blank truth, however unpalatable.’ (Calvocoressi: 1933-4, pp. 93-94). Mussorgsky is thus often classified as a realist in his approach to music. Mussorgsky was a member of the New Russian School and his music is characterised by extensive use of Cossack and Caucasian folk tunes, religious music, including use of church bells which is a feature of Boris Godunov, and departures from Western classical harmonic conventions, such as the use of parallel fifths and tonal shifts so that, for example, Mussorgsky’s original scoring for Boris Godunov had no fixed key. Although it is difficult to identify specific influences on his work, Mussorgsky makes extensive use of leitmotifs in Boris, a technique pioneered by Richard Wagner (1813-1883), and like other members of the New Russian School, is influenced by Franz Liszt (1811-1886) in terms of his use of harmony and theme transformation (Calvocoressi: 1933/1934, p. 94) (Zenkin: 2001) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856), whose work Carnaval (1834-1835) is often compared to Pictures at an Exhibition. However, Boris is mostly notable for Mussorgsky’s musical innovations. ‘Mussorgsky had one of the most extraordinary ears for wind-writing music has known, very Russian, and completely unlike any other before Stravinsky.’ (Audette, 1971: p. 115). ‘When he had a point to make, he made it – whether by means of the successive dominant-tonic or by means of consecutive fifths or sevenths or any other thing, however unconventional it might be, did not matter in the least.’ (Calvocoressi: 1933/1934, p.95).
Boris Godunov –Tsar of Russia
ris Godunov on the play of the same name by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) published in 1831. The play is in twenty-five scenes and written mainly in blank verse. Both the play and the opera are based on the story of Boris Godunov who was Tsar of Russia from 1598 to 1605, having previously been regent to the Tsar Feodor Ivanovich, oldest son of Ivan the Terrible. During his regency, Ivan the Terrible’s son Dimitry Ivanovich (1581-1591) died in unexplained circumstances and Boris was suspected of involvement in his death to further his own ambitions to become Tsar. During Boris’s reign, a Pretender to the throne claiming to be Dimitry Ivanovich, but in both the play and opera actually a monk named Grigory Otrepy, through his marriage to a Polish noblewoman Marina Mniszech enlists the Polish aristocracy in inciting an insurrection against Boris. Although Boris died of natural causes in April 1605, his son, who succeeded him as Tsar, and his wife were killed in June 1605 by forces loyal to the Pretender and Marina. Both Pushkin’s play and Mussorgsky’s opera start with the coronation of Boris, then chart the rise of the Pretender and his marriage to Marina, set against Boris’ increasing guilt over his murder of Dimitry and his death in 1605 with the forces of the Pretender approaching Moscow. Mussorgsky himself wrote the libretto for the opera and while he followed the basic structure of Pushkin’s play he reduced the number of scenes in his original version to seven and in his revised version of 1872 to nine scenes.
The different versions of Boris Godunov
There are two authentic versions of the opera Boris Godunov written by Mussorgsky. The first, consisting of seven scenes, was completed in 1869. In February 1871 it was rejected by the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres and Mussorgsky set about revising the work to meet their demands. The second version was published in 1872 with two new scenes set in Poland and a more prominent role given to the female lead Marina and further revised in 1874. This abridged version formed the basis of the Maryinski Theatre performance of the opera in 1874 and modern productions of the opera. Rimsky-Korsakov made two revisions, one published in 1896 and the other in 1908, based on the 1874 abridged version of Boris. Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1896 version became accepted in the canon of twentieth century opera. Rimsky-Korsakov made many changes to Mussorgsky’s version. ‘Orchestration, rhythm and harmony were all ruthlessly revised in an attempt to “make its lofty significance clearer and more accessible, at the same time putting an end to all carping criticism of this work” (Hugh MacDonald: 1977, p. 88).
The Scenes of Boris (1874 revised version)
Mussorgsky starts the 1874 revised version with the prologue set in the Novodiechy monastery near Moscow followed by the coronation of Boris in 1598 set in the Moscow Kremlin. Act I is set five years later in the Chodov monastery and introduces the Pretender Otrepev who is told by a monk called Pimen of the murder of Dimitry. The second scene is set in a tavern near the Lithuanian border where Dimitry narrowly escapes from the police. Act II is set in the nursery at the Kremlin where Boris learns of the Pretender’s polish led insurrection and has a hallucinatory vision of the murdered Dimitry. The two scenes of Act III are set in Poland and portray the cynical liaison between the Pretender and Marina and the intrigues of the Jesuit priest Rangoni. The first scene of the 1874 revised version is set in the council chamber of the influential Boyars where Boris dies of a heart attack following Monk Pimen’s narration of a miracle at the grave of Dimitry. The final scene is set in Kromy forest near Moscow, where the Pretender appears and leads a march on Moscow.
Reception of Boris Godunov
The first full performance of Boris, largely based on a 1874 revised version of the 1872 revision, was by the Maryinski theatre in Saint Petersburg on 27 January 1874. Due to the politically charged content of the opera, dealing with a revolt against the Tsar, the revisions had been required by the selection committee of the Imperial Theatres. The opera proved a great popular success and was performed 21 times during Mussorgsky’s lifetime. However, the critical reception was almost universally hostile, even from fellow members of the New Russian School such as César Cui and Mily Balakirev. Rimsky-Korsakov himself, while admiring the originality of the score, was critical of its perceived harmonic deficiencies, including a lack of modulation, and set about rectifying them in his own manner in his first version of the work in 1896 and subsequent more substantial revision of 1908. Performances of Boris until 1928 were based on Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1908 version until the Mussorgsky’s original 1869 version was performed in 1928 in Leningrad and this and the 1872 version have gradually superseded production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s versions. Another influential orchestration of Mussorgsky’s score was by Dimitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) which received a premier in 1959 and is based on a reworking of both Mussorgsky’s and Rimsky-Korsakov’s versions.
Conclusion
Mussorgsky’s musical legacy is unusual in that it has entered the repertory through the medium of revisions by other composers, notably his only completed opera Boris Godunov through the two revised versions by Rimsky-Korsakov. However, the original scoring of Mussorgsky’s version of Boris is now generally recognised as of greater musical originality and economy than Rimsky-Korsakov. ‘Rimsky-Korsakov made a fundamental misjudgment when he felt the need to enrich Mussorgsky’s orchestral technique. The most striking aspect of Mussorgsky’s own scoring (which was consistency praised in his lifetime) is its economy. He did not need the Wagnerian panoply for orchestral expressiveness; he can move mountains simply with a pair of clarinets and a pair of bassoons, a sonority of particular persistence in this work.’ (MacDonald: 1977, p.89).
Bibliography
Gerald Abraham, Mussorgsky’s ‘Boris’ and Pushkin’s (Music & Letters, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jan. 1945), pp. 31-38)
Greg Audette, Effective Mussorgsky, The Massachusetts Review Vol. 12, No. 1 ( Winter 1971), pp. 111-118.
M. D. Calvocoressi, The Unknown Mussorgsky, (Music & Letters, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Jul. 1922), pp. 237-244.
M. D. Calvocoressi, Mussorgsky’s Youth and Early Development, (Proceedings of the Musical Association, 60th Sess. (1933-1934), pp. 87-104.
Brett Cooke, Musical Truth in Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Politics and Culture, April 29, 2010
Hugh McDonald, ‘Boris’ : Book Review, (19th-Century Music, Vol. 1, No. 1 (July 1977), pp. 87-89).
Konstantin Zenkin, The Liszt Tradition at the Moscow Conservatoire, Studia
Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, (2001) pp. 93-108.
Score
Boris Godunov, Berliner Philharmoniker, directed by Claudio Abbado (1991, Sony Classical). Based on Mussorgsky’s 1872 version.