‟What a terrible blow!”  Mussorgsky exclaimed in a letter to the critic Vladimir Stasov in 1874, paraphrasing a famous passage from Shakespeare’s King Lear.  ‟Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, live on, when creatures like Hartman must die?”  Victor Hartman, a gifted artist and close friend of Mussorgsky's, had recently passed away at the age of 39.  A commemorative exhibit of his paintings inspired Mussorgsky to pay musical tribute to his friend by writing a suite for solo piano based on his impressions of the paintings.  The suite was not performed or published during the composer's lifetime, however, and it did not become universally known until Maurice Ravel orchestrated it in 1922.

 The first picture, ‟Gnomus,” represents a toy nutcracker in the shape of a dwarf.  The strange and unpredictable movements of this creature are depicted quite vividly in the music.  We hear the ‟Promenade” again, and are then ushered into ‟Il vecchio castello” (‟The Old Castle”), where a troubadour (a medieval courtly singer) sings a wistful song, played by the saxophone in Ravel's version.  Next, we hear (and can almost see) ‟Bydlo,” the Polish oxcart, slowly approaching and the going away as its ponderous melody, which Ravel gave to the solo tuba, gets first louder and then softer.

A much shortened ‟Promenade,” more lyrical in tone than before, leads into the ‟Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks.”  This movement is based on the designs Hartman had made for the ballet Trilbi at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.  In the ballet, a group of children appeared dressed up as canaries; others, according to a contemporary description, were ‟enclosed in eggs as in suits of armor,” with only their legs sticking out of the eggshells.

The next picture is titled, in the original, ‟Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuyle.”  Hartman had painted a number of characters from the Jewish ghetto in Sandomierz, Poland, including a rich man in a fur hat and a poor one sitting with his head bent.  Although Mussorgsky left no explanation of the movement, it has traditionally been understood as an argument between two Jews, one rich, the other poor.  The rich Jew is represented by a slow-moving unison melody stressing the augmented second, considered an "Oriental" interval and indeed frequent in certain forms of Jewish chant and folk music with which Mussorgsky was familiar.  The poor man is characterized by a plaintive theme whose repeated notes seem to be choking with emotion.  Then, the two themes are heard simultaneously.  In Ravel’s orchestration, Goldenberg has the entire string section at his command, while Schmuyle tries to defend himself, desperately, to the sound of a single muted trumpet.

“Limoges, the Market:  The Big News” portrays the hustle and bustle of an open market in France where people are busy gossiping and quarrelling.  

What a contrast to go from here immediately to the “Catacombs.”  Hartman’s watercolor shows the artist, a friend and their guide, who is holding a lantern, examining the underground burial chambers in Paris.  On the right, one can see a large pile of skulls which, in Mussorgsky’s imagination, suddenly begin to glow.  The ‟Promenade” theme appears completely transfigured, as the Latin inscription in the score says, Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (‟With the dead in a dead language”).  

 The next section, (‟The Hut on Fowl’s Legs:  Baba Yaga”) evokes the witch of Russian folktales who lives in just such an edifice.  According to legend, Baba Yaga lures children into her hut where she eats them.  In one recent retelling of the story, she ‟crushes their bones in the giant mortar in which she rides through the woods propelling herself with the pestle and covering her tracks with a broomstick.”  Hartman had designed a clock in the form of the famous hut; its design survives only as a sketch.  Mussorgsky’s movement, whose rhythm has something of the ticking of a giant clock, has a mysterious-sounding middle section, after which the wilder and louder first material returns.

The ‟witch music” continues directly into the grand finale (‟The Knights’ Gate in the Ancient City of Kiev”), inspired by an ambitious design that was submitted for a competition but never built.  For the immense architectural structure, Mussorgsky provided a grandiose melody resembling a church hymn and presented in rich harmonies.  This theme alternates with a more subdued second melody, harmonized like a chorale.  Near the end, ‟Promenade” theme reappears, and leads directly into the magnificent final climax.

~ Notes by Peter Laki, copyright 2025

¹ Mussorgsky used the Russian name for what is today the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.  For him, the city was the ancient capital of Kievan Rus, a powerful medieval state that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus all claim as their ancestor.