Pictures at an Exhibition

Modest Mussorgsky’s *Pictures at an Exhibition* is a piano suite from 1874. It has ten movements, plus a recurring “Promenade” theme that appears in varied forms. The piece musically walks through an exhibition of works by the architect and painter Viktor Hartmann, held at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg after Hartmann’s sudden death the year before. Each movement is based on a single artwork by Hartmann; some of these works are now lost. The suite, especially its final movement, “The Bogatyr Gates,” is often regarded as one of Mussorgsky’s finest achievements.

Mussorgsky likely met Hartmann in 1868, shortly after the artist’s return to Russia from abroad. Both were committed to creating a distinctly Russian art and became close friends, probably meeting at the home of the influential critic Vladimir Stasov. According to Stasov, Hartmann gave Mussorgsky two pictures in 1868 that later became part of *Pictures at an Exhibition*. In 1870, Mussorgsky dedicated the second song of his cycle *The Nursery* to Hartmann. Stasov noted that Hartmann admired Mussorgsky’s music, especially the “Scene by the Fountain” from the opera *Boris Godunov*. Mussorgsky had originally cut that scene from the 1869 version, but at the urging of Stasov and Hartmann, he rewrote it for Act 3 in the 1872 revision.

The years 1873–74 saw the staging of *Boris Godunov*, the peak of Mussorgsky’s public success. Mussorgsky’s distant relative and roommate, Arseniy Golenishchev-Kutuzov, recalled that during the opera’s January 1874 premiere run, there were about nine performances, each sold out, with audiences loudly calling for the composer. But this triumph was undercut by harsh press from critics. Other troubles also weighed on Mussorgsky: the breakup of The Mighty Handful and their failure to grasp his artistic aims left him isolated in Saint Petersburg’s musical scene. Golenishchev-Kutuzov wrote that Mussorgsky alone still held the group’s banner, while the others had gone their separate ways.

Hartmann’s sudden death from an aneurysm on 4 August 1873, at age 39, devastated Mussorgsky and the Russian art world. Stasov helped organize a memorial exhibition of over 400 Hartmann works at the Imperial Academy of Arts in February and March 1874. Mussorgsky lent the two pictures Hartmann had given him and attended the show. In June, while working on his song cycle *Sunless*, Mussorgsky was inspired to compose *Pictures at an Exhibition*, finishing the score in just three weeks, from 2 to 22 June 1874. In a letter to Stasov, he wrote that Hartmann was “boiling” in his mind, with sounds and ideas crowding in, and that he was writing the fourth number, with good transitions on the “Promenade.” He added that his own personality could be seen in the interludes. The music follows a tour of the exhibition, with each of the ten numbers illustrating a specific Hartmann work.

Five days after finishing, Mussorgsky wrote a dedication to Stasov on the manuscript’s title page. A month later, he noted his intention to publish it. Golenishchev-Kutuzov gave a possibly biased account of the work’s reception: he claimed that with *Pictures at an Exhibition*, Mussorgsky reached the peak of his musical radicalism, depicting chicks, children, Baba Yaga in her hut on chicken legs, catacombs, gates, and rattling carts—all done seriously. His devotees were enthusiastic, but many friends and fellow composers were puzzled and shook their heads. Mussorgsky, noticing this, seemed to feel he had gone too far, set the work aside, and never tried to publish it, instead devoting himself to *Khovanshchina*. In August, he finished the last two songs of *Sunless* and resumed work on *Khovanshchina*, composing its prelude in September.

Like most of Mussorgsky’s works, *Pictures at an Exhibition* has a complicated publication history. Though written quickly in June 1874, it was not printed until 1886, five years after the composer’s death.