While Russia had a long tradition of importing music from other European countries, the nationalistic fervor in Europe around 1850 gave rise to “The Five,” a group of composers who strove to create a distinctly Russian idiom: Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, César Cui, and Mily Balakirev. Colleagues in other fields supported them, including Mussorgsky’s friend, artist Victor Hartmann. When Hartmann died suddenly at 39, his colleagues organized a memorial exhibit of his artwork. At this event, Mussorgsky got the idea for Pictures at an Exhibition. He was overwhelmed with creativity. As he wrote to a friend, “[the work] is bubbling over…Ideas, melodies come to me of their own accord, like a banquet of music—I gorge and gorge and overeat myself. I can hardly manage to put them down on paper fast enough.” 

Originally written for piano and orchestrated by Ravel, each movement of Pictures at an Exhibition depicts a painting or sketch shown at Hartmann’s posthumous show, unified by a musical “Promenade” via which the listener “walks” from work to work. Russian music critic Vladimir Stasov provides the following descriptions of each movement: 

Promenade. This recurring melody illustrates Mussorgsky “roving through the exhibition, now leisurely, now briskly in order to come close to a picture that had attracted his attention, and, at times sadly, thinking of his friend.” 

Gnomus (The Gnome): “A sketch depicting a little gnome, clumsily running with crooked legs.” 

Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle):  “A medieval castle before which a troubadour sings a song.” 

Tuileries (Dispute d’enfants après jeux) (Dispute between Children at Play): “An avenue in the garden of the Tuileries, with a swarm of children and nurses.” 

Bydlo (The Ox-Cart): “A Polish cart on enormous wheels, drawn by oxen.” 

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks:  “Hartmann’s design for the décor of a picturesque scene in the ballet Trilby,” apparently depicting dancers encased in huge eggshells. 

Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle. “Two Jews: one rich, the other poor.” Mussorgsky based both themes on incantations he had heard on visits to Jewish synagogues. 

The Market at Limoges: “French women quarreling violently in the market.” 

Catacombs: “Hartmann represented himself examining the Paris catacombs by the light of a lantern.” 

Hut on Fowl’s Legs: “Hartmann’s drawing depicted a clock in the form of Baba-Yaga’s hut on fowl’s legs. Mussorgsky added the witch’s flight in a mortar.” (The fearsome witch Baba Yaga flies in the mortar in which she grinds human bones to eat.)  

The Great Gate of Kiev: A musical realization of Hartmann’s design for a memorial gate in Kiev, in massive Old Russian style, in honor of Tsar Alexander II.

—©Jennifer More, 2022