by Frederick Stone
Pictures at an Exhibition Mussorgsky
1 Promenade. 2 Gnomus. 3L II vecehio castello (The Old Castle). 4 Tuilleries: Children playing Games and Quarrelling. 5 Bydlo. 6 Ballet of Chickens in their Shells. 7 Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle. 8 The Market Place at Limoges. 9 Catacombs. 10 The Hut on Fowls' Legs. 11 The Gate of the Bohatyrs at Kiev
(From Northern Ireland)
In 1873 Victor Hartmann , a well-known architect and painter, member of Balakirev's circle, and close friend of Stassov, the critic, and Mussorgsky, died at the early age of thirty-nine. Mussorgsky was deeply upset and in the following year when Stassov arranged an exhibition of Hartmann's water colours and drawings, he was moved to compose a cycle of ten piano pieces based on various subjects from Hartmann's pictures. These he entitled ' Pictures from an Exhibition.'
Mussorgsky appears to have been highly stimulated with the idea, for in a letter to Stassov, to whom the work is dedicated, he says: ' Hartmann is bubbling over, just as Boris Godunov did. Ideas, melodies, come to me of their own accord ... I can hardly manage to put it all down on paper fast enough.' One of these ideas was an introduction under the title of ' Promenade which represents the spectator walking through the exhibition, and as he moves on from one picture to another a modified version of it reappears. Mussorgsky was particularly pleased with these ' promenades ', and asserted that his 'own physiognomy peeps-all through ' them.