Uncommon Lyricisms: Modest Musorgsky s Early Songs (Paperback)

Modest Musorgsky is most often considered a composer of remarkable opera symphonic and piano works. He is not as well known however particularly outside his native Russia for his art songs possibly excepting his song The Song of the Flea and his song cycles Songs and Dances of Death and The Nursery. This book aims to present to the reader six of Musorgsky s early songs (1857-1867) that reveal his striking mastery of the smaller form of the art song. Furthermore the brilliant ways in which Musorgsky structures and seems to conjure each song s lyrical veins which are often poetically astounding are argued to possess literary and musical images and expressions that at the very least approach the achievements of the great song composers such as Schubert Schumann Debussy Verdi Wagner and Musorgsky s compatriots Rachmaninov Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. Uncommon Lyricisms strives to show Musorgsky s ability to orchestrate his spontaneous lyrical strata in songs with the forms or character of the genres of the romance folk song opera and vaudeville and to introduce the songs poetic texts three of which Musorgsky wrote himself with translations and transliterations in English to aid English speakers or speakers of languages with the Latin alphabet with the language barrier. It is the author s belief that once the reader becomes more acquainted with Musorgsky s songs he or she will be struck in these compositions - supposedly - smaller scale by the powerful expression atmospheric beauty and comic humor that Musorgsky summons forth within them.