Composers and their working methods

Well here's one working method to avoid: suffer from spiritual crises, dipsomania, delirium tremens and leave most of your major projects unfinished at your untimely death shortly after your 42nd birthday.

Rimsky-Korsakov said of Mussorgsky: 'so talented, original, full of so much that was new and vital', yet revealed in his manuscripts 'technical clumsiness, absurd, disconnected harmony, ugly part-writing, sometimes strikingly illogical modulation, sometimes a depressing lack of it, unsuccessful scoring of the orchestral things....Publication without some setting in order by a skilled hand would have had no sense, apart from a biographical-historical one'. (Gerald Abraham in the book 'The New Grove: Russian Masters 1 Glinka Borodin Balakirev Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky' and published by Papermac).

In the case of the Bare Mountain music, Rimsky-Korsakov entirely dismissed the original 1867 version and wrote what was essentially a new piece based on Mussorgsky's materials. He finished and orchestrated Khovanshchina, and in 1896 produced his own new version of Boris Godunov complete with 'drastic cuts, wholesale rewriting and complete rescoring of the surviving text, insertion of a certain amount of new music' (his own of course) and changing the order of the last two scenes. (The quotation is from Abraham again).

The list of people who added to Sorochintsky Fair has to be read to be believed. Not Rimsky on this occasion.

However, a happy ending; from 1908 on some unease was felt with with the RK versions, and a campaign ensued to re-instate Mussorgsky's originals as it were. In 1928 the Russian State Music Publishing Corporation began a complete and collected edition of the composer's originals, with the result that Mussorgsky's 1869 version of Boris Godunov is staged at Sadler's Wells in 1935.

The talk about Bruckner, Elgar, Mahler reconstructions has got me thinking about John's point re: the ethics in this case of Rimsky-Korsakov's professorial dismissal of some of Mussorgsky's quirks. Personally I find the bold changes of harmony in Pictures (piano version) absolutely brilliant.

I'm not sure which is more shocking; Mussorgsky's self-defeating alcoholism or the way his scores were re-written and assembled by others who considered themselves worthy and capable of somehow ordering the disconnected and erratic, almost lunatic, ramblings of the composer with his insatiable craving for alcohol. If you wish to re-write someone else's work, at least show some sympathy and understanding!

A great talent and a truly tragic figure: the CD of his choruses I have by Abbado is truly stirring and inspiring stuff. Apart from many songs and some piano works and of course Boris Godunov, what he completed is a sadly small corpus of music. 

Mark

PS Apparently he left the openings to two movements from a projected Symphony in D. Now that would have been something, a symphony by Mussorgsky!

Yes Parla. I was deliberately choosing the worst example I could think of!

I am certainly not against re-construction, and the debate on the Bruckner 9, both on its own thread and on this one has been fascinating. The ethical issue is when something stops being re-construction and becomes a new composition by a different hand. You can just imagine Rimsky-Korsakov sitting in his study, red pen in hand, tutt-tutting as he crossed out some of Mussorgsky's 'errant' harmonic progressions.

Ironically, the success of Boris Godunov being staged at the Maryinsky theatre in February 1874 seems to have had an adverse effect on Mussorgsky's condition. In his book on Pictures At An Exhibition, Michael Russ quotes this letter by Stasov (lifelong friend of Mussorgsky and dedicatee of Pictures) to his daughter from March of that year:

'he has completely changed. He has begun to drink more and more, his face has swollen and turned dark red, his eyes have gone bad, and he hangs out at the Mary Yaroslavets almost all day, where that damed carousing crowd gathers. So many efforts have been made to drag him out of there and join with all of us again-nothing helps. And besides, he has become somehow petty and pusillanimous'.

Although there are apparently one or two other voices from the time who think Stasov may have been exaggerating a little...still it is possibly another insight into Mussorgsky's troubled state even when successful.

Mark

PS In a letter to Stasov from June 1874 the composer, at work on Pictures, said; '...sounds and ideas have been hanging in the air; I am devouring them and stuffing myself - I barely have time to scribble them on paper'. (Michael Russ' book cited above). In other words, his working method during the composition of this piece was to shovel food down himself in an effort to keep himself off the alcohol!

PPS As regards his actual process of composition, apparently Mussorgsky composed at the piano in advance of writing out the manuscript. He worked it out at the piano beforehand. Interesting.

Small world Chris! Thanks for that by the way. You are obviously a big fan of Boris! My recording of Boris Godunov is the 1962 one on HMV Concert Classics vinyl with Christoff playing three roles - Boris, Pimen and Varlamm! Strictly speaking this album is the 'highlights', and goes from the coronation scene to Boris' death.

This one is RK's version by the way.

The CD of Abbado I referred to above is a 1980 recording on RCA Victor Gold Seal and includes The Chorus of Priestesses from Salammbo, the Chorus of People in the temple from Oedipus in Athens, The Destruction of Sennacherib poem by Byron (choral work), the original version of Night on Bald Mountain and the early Scherzo in B flat from 1858 (also Mussorgsky's original). Other tracks include the prelude and Galitsin's journey from Khovanshchina. Six of the nine pieces including those last two are orchestrated by RK. Wonderful CD.

Mark 

The following is from an interview with Meirion Bowen in the booklet which accompanies the boxed vinyl set of the 4 symphonies issued by Decca in 1984:

What is the most difficult stage for you in the composition of a symphony?

'The opening, always. A lot of premeditation and planning - sometimes lasting years - will go into the notion of the work as a whole and of its structure, before I come to write the notes. But then beginning the piece, that's a real test: it can take me hours, maybe a whole week. The Third Symphony, for instance, took seven years of intermittent consideration and eventual creation. Until I eventually sat at the piano to compose, the work was simply ideas in my head, scattered jottings and mnemonics simply recording my notions of what possibilities might be explored in the work. Some of these were to be discarded, others kept. The original, spontaneous conception of 'immobile' polarized against 'speedy' music was always the main structuring factor. By the time I reached the piano, it had a structure and balance, the proportions were known. Working at the piano, I didn't find the precise sounds on the instrument, so much as through it. I can invent as though the orchestral score were in my head all the time -  and indeed I write straight onto full score, always have done. It's a search for the right sounds...The opening of a piece is always a problem'.

An interesting one. It is as if he had a structural template in his head, hence the searching for the right sounds. Also another composer who could take years on a large-scale work, and once again the importance of exploring at the piano.

This has some affinities with Shostakovitch and Glazunov composing the whole piece in their heads first, and with Bruckner's mapping out, and with Rubbra and others composing at the piano. Not exactly in Tippett's case working the piece out at the piano, but as it was an orchestral piece using the piano to find the right sounds...