Modest Mussorgsky 1. Promenade: A visitor, perhaps the composer, enters the exhibtion (in modo russico) and looks around, here and there, finally slowing down in front of the first picture. The motif heard in this first promenade is woven throughout the entire composition. 2. The Gnome (First Picture): Hartmann’s picture was a design for a nutcracker of the St.Petersburg Art Club. A waddling dwarf, who is by no means only comical, but also somewhat mystical and diabolical. 3. Promenade: The visitor continues. The promenade is shorter, clearer and more plain. 4. The Old Castle (Second Picture): In the catalogue to Hartmann’s exhibition, this picture is not mentioned. One can, therefore, only suppose that this movement refers to a watercolour. A troubadour is singing his sentimental song in front of a medieval castle. Here the marimbas are able to create the perfect atmosphere with tremoli, performed with soft mallets, that then develop into a intimate, gentle song. 5. Promenade: The motif is shortened this time, yet played more forcefully, loud and driving, in a new key. 6. Children‘s Quarrelling at Play (Third Picture): This stroll with children and their nannies through the Tuillery gardens is musically characterized by the contrasting themes, depicting the horsing around and bickering of the children. 7. Bydlo (Fourth Picture): Hartmann depicts a huge Polish wagon being drawn with great effort by oxen. It approaches massively and with great force, then disappearing into the distance. Here the marimbas are played with vehemence and the appropriate impure mallets, which seem to make the oxcart actually pass before our inner eye. 8. Promenade: The promenade motif becomes slower and softer. It is short and is interrupted toward the end by the theme of the next picture. 9. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks (Fifth Picture): With intertwined rhythms, both dancing and comical, Mussorgsky musically brings Hartmann’s sketch of a ballet scene in St. Petersburg to life. The two marimbas support this dance with light, high notes. 10. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle (Sixth Picture): Hartmann’s pencil drawings of two Jews, one poor and one rich, inspired this musical picture. Two opposing worlds are represented by respective musical themes which begin to quarrel and then develop into a battling entity. 11. Promenade: Once again in the key and form of the first promenade, though this time in octaves. 12. The Market Square -The Big News (Seventh Picture): Mussorgsky’s depiction of many gossiping market women. Facing a background of general market noises, one seems incapable of understanding one’s own words. Using very hard mallets, the marimbas join in the palaver as well. 13. Catacombs - A Roman Sepulchre (Eighth Picture): Hartmann offers us a self-portrait in which he explores the catacombs of Paris. The damp, tomb-like atmosphere is rendered almost physically tangible by low hollow-sounding marimba tremoli. 14. With the Dead in a Dead Language: The promenade motif appears in a ghostly minor key. The voice of the marimbas adapts itself to the subject of the picture, sometimes with tremolo and sometimes with individual strokes. 15. The Hut on Hen’s Legs - Baba-Yaga (Ninth Picture): In the Russian legend, the witch Baba-Yaga flies through the air in her mortar and pestle. Mussorgsky adds a clock in the form of Baba-Yaga to Hartmann’s image of the witch’s flight. Moments of extreme movement alternate with quiet, demonic passages. 16. The Bogatyr Gate at Kiev, the Ancient Capital (Tenth Picture): In a great procession, the people pass the newly-built city gate (which only exists in Hartmanns painting and was never actually built). The entire dignity and majestic grandeur of the Russian people, including a Russian-orthodox chorale, are lit up here in Mussorgsky’s music. The main theme with the ringing bells and triumphant march appear once again in a great musical arch. return to top of page