Musorgsky : eight essays and an epilogue / by Richard Taruskin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Taruskin, Richard, author.

Series:

Princeton paperbacks

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mussorgsky, Modest Petrovich, 1839-1881.

Mussorgsky, Modest Petrovich.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxxiv, 415 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

2nd pr. and 1st pbk. pr.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey ; Oxford, England : Princeton University Press, [1993]

Summary:

"It is [a] fully illuminated story that Richard Taruskin, in the path-breaking essays collected here, unfolds around Modest Musorgsky, Russia's greatest national composer. [Taruskin's] tour de force comes with a frontal attack on all the Soviet-bred truisms that for a century have refashioned Musorgsky from what the evidence suggests he was--an aristocrat with an early clinical interest in true-to-life musical portraiture and a later penchant for drinking partners who were both folklore buffs and political reactionaries democrat."--From the foreword Incorporating both new and now-classic essays, this book for the first time sets the vocal works of Modest Musorgsky in a fully detailed cultural, political, and historical context. From this perspective Richard Taruskin revises fundamentally the composer's historical and artistic image, in particular debunking the century-old dogmas of Vladimir Stasov, Musorgsky's first biographer. Here the author offers the most complete explanation of the revision of the opera Boris Godunov, compares it to contemporaneous operas by Chaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, advances a revisionary characterization of Khovanshchina as an aristocratic tragedy informed by a pessimistic view of history, discusses Musorgsky's use of folklore, and, focusing on Sorochintsi Fair, brings to a climax his refutation of Musorgsky as a protorevolutionary populist. The epilogue is a survey of revisionary productions of Musorgsky's works at home during the Gorbachev era.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

A Note On Transliteration

A Note On Dates

Table Of Abbreviations

Pronouncing The Name

What Is A Kuchka?

Introduction. Who Speaks for Musorgsky?

1: "Little Star": An Etude in the Folk Style

2: Handel, Shakespeare, and Musorgsky: The Sources and Limits of Russian Musical Realism

3: Serov and Musorgsky

4: The Present in the Past: Russian Opera and Russian Historiography, circa 1870

5: Musorgsky versus Musorgsky: The Versions of Boris Godunov

6: Slava!

7: The Power of the Black Earth: Notes on Khovanshchina

8: Sorochintsi Fair Revisited

Epiogue: Musorgsky in the Age of Glasnost

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691091471

0691091471

OCLC:

1273307363