Stasov comment: In this piece Mussorgsky depicts himself " 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 departed friend.

Inspired by Russian literary works and legend, Mussorgsky made a witches ' sabbath the theme of a ' musical picture ' titled St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain (), completed on 23 June 1867 ( St. John's Eve ).

Mussorgsky for him symbolized two things — the people and recurrence.

Mussorgsky adapted the most theatrically effective scenes, mainly those featuring the title character, along with a few other key scenes ( Novodevichy, Cell, Inn ), often preserving Pushkin's verses.

This may account for his success as an orchestrator and as a transcriber of his own piano works and those of other composers, such as Mussorgsky, Debussy and Schumann.

In that capacity, he conducted the premieres of many operas by Russian composers, including those by Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.

The Mlada project was soon aborted, and Borodin, like the other members of The Mighty Handful who were involved — César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov — thought about ways to recycle the music he contributed.

With this work, Ravel followed in the tradition of Schumann, Mussorgsky, and Debussy, who also created memorable works of childhood themes.

In 1856 Mussorgsky – who had developed a strong interest in history and studied German philosophy – successfully graduated from the Cadet School.

Mixed impressions are recorded by Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, colleagues of Mussorgsky who, unlike him, made their living as composers.

Mussorgsky, for instance, called the Saint Petersburg Conservatory a place where Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba, who taught music theory there, dressed " in professional, antimusical togas, first pollute their students ' minds, then seal them with various abominations.

The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful, The Mighty Five, or The Mighty Coterie (, Moguchaya kuchka ), refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856 – 1870: Mily Balakirev ( the leader ), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin.

This loose collection of composers gathered around Balakirev now included Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin — the five who have come to be associated with the name " Mighty Handful ", or sometimes " The Five ".

Other classical composers who wrote polonaises or pieces in polonaise rhythm include Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Michał Kleofas Ogiński, Franz Schubert, Vincenzo Bellini, Carl Maria von Weber, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Moritz Moszkowski, Friedrich Baumfelder, Mauro Giuliani, Modest Mussorgsky, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Alexander Scriabin.

While part of this development may have been from Rimsky-Korsakov's need to find a spiritual replacement for Modest Mussorgsky, who had died that March, it may have also been from observing his progress on the first of Glazunov's eight symphonies.

In the Pushkin tragedy and the Mussorgsky opera, Otrepyev is a young monk who decides to impersonate the Tsarevitch when he hears they would have been the same age had the child lived.

Amongst this circle was a group who became known as The Mighty Handful, consisting of Mily Balakirev ( railroad clerk ), Alexander Borodin ( chemist ), César Cui ( soldier and engineer ), Modest Mussorgsky ( Imperial Guard Officer ) and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov ( navy officer ).

Gedeonov revised his conception as an opera-ballet, with a libretto by Viktor Krïlov, and in 1872 proposed through Vladimir Stasov a collaborative effort by four members of The Mighty Handful — César Cui, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky and Aleksandr Borodin — who were to write music for the sung portions of the libretto and dramatic action.

Nor was he consoling about Modest Mussorgsky, a composer who, as a member of " The Five ," he had helped nurture but about whom, for all the public praise of his musical gifts, there was always a note of intellectual condescension.

Poulenc acknowledged his debt to Mussorgsky, Monteverdi, Verdi, and Debussy in the dedication of this opera but still felt apologetic about the opera's conservative harmonic language saying " You must forgive my Carmelites.

( Mussorgsky cleverly contrasts the two groups by their orchestral accompaniment, solemn chords or mocking staccatos.

Borodin returned to Prince Igor in 1874, inspired by the success of his comrades Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky in the staging of their historical operas, The Maid of Pskov ( 1873 ) and Boris Godunov ( 1874 ).

The latter was the only important piece he composed between December 1860 and August 1863: the reasons for this probably lie in the painful re-emergence of his subjective crisis in 1860 and the purely objective difficulties which resulted from the emancipation of the serfs the following year – as a result of which the family was deprived of half its estate, and Mussorgsky had to spend a good deal of time in Karevo unsuccessfully attempting to stave off their looming impoverishment.

By the late 1860s, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov stopped accepting what they now considered his high-handed meddling with their work, and Stasov began to distance himself from Balakirev.

The surviving works by Hartmann that can be shown with any certainty to have been used by Mussorgsky in assembling his suite, along with their titles, are as follows:

Opened in 1860, it became the preeminent music theatre of late 19th century Russia, where many of the stage masterpieces of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov received their premieres.

In their January 2007 concert, for example, they played La Gazza Ladra Overture by Rossini, Night on Bald Mountain by Modeste Mussorgsky, Weber's Clarinet Concerto No. 2, and Dvořák's New World Symphony.

Otherwise Mussorgsky reserves his vocal melodies for prolonged expressions of emotion -- Boris' first monologue, for example.

Although enthusiasm for the work was high, Mussorgsky faced a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to his plans in that an Imperial ukaz of 1837 forbade the portrayal in opera of Russian Tsars ( amended in 1872 to include only Romanov Tsars ).

In 1871, Mussorgsky set about recasting and expanding the opera with enthusiasm, ultimately going beyond the requirements of the directorate of the Imperial Theatres, which called simply for the addition of a female role and a scene to contain it.

When Mussorgsky's subsequent opera Khovanshchina was rejected for production in 1883, the Imperial Opera Committee reputedly said: " One radical opera by Mussorgsky is enough.

By 1971, with the releases Pictures at an Exhibition and Trilogy, Emerson began to fully credit classical composers, Modest Mussorgsky for the piano piece which inspired the first album, and Aaron Copland for " Hoedown " on the second.

More tellingly for Mussorgsky, it was likely where he began his eventual path to alcoholism.

For a time Mussorgsky was able to maintain his creative output: his compositions from 1874 include Sunless, the Khovanschina Prelude, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition ( in memory of Hartmann ); he also began work on another opera based on Gogol, The Fair at Sorochyntsi ( for which he produced another choral version of Night on Bald Mountain ).

Stasov wrote Balakirev, in an 1863 letter, " I have no use whatever for Mussorgsky.

Taylor had prepared introductions for The Firebird by Stravinsky, La Mer by Claude Debussy, Adventures in a Perambulator by John Alden Carpenter, Don Quixote by Richard Strauss, and Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky " to have them for the future in case we decided to make any one of them ".

Pictures at an Exhibition (, Kartinki s vystavki – Vospominaniye o Viktore Gartmane, " Pictures from an Exhibition – A Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann ") is a suite in ten movements composed for piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.

* Modest Mussorgsky, Pesni i plyaski smerti ( Songs and Dances of Death ), song cycle for bass voice and piano

He praised the " sublime genius " of Wagner and saw some value in the work of other contemporary composers, for example Richard Strauss, Elgar, Mussorgsky, and Sibelius.

" Musically, the supposed ritual has been used as inspiration for such works as Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky and the fifth movement of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.

To salvage what he considered worthy material, Mussorgsky attempted to insert his Bare Mountain music, recast for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, in two subsequent projects — the collaborative opera-ballet Mlada ( 1872 ) and the opera Sorochintsï Fair ( 1880 ).

Rimsky-Korsakov declares in his memoirs ( Chronicle of My Musical Life ) that in the early 1860s Mussorgsky, under the influence of Franz Liszt's Totentanz, had written a version of the Bare Mountain music for piano and orchestra.

In 1866 Mussorgsky wrote to Balakirev expressing a desire to discuss his plans for The Witches, his informal name for his Bare Mountain music.