Modest Mussorgsky : The Old Castle from Pictures at an Exhibition

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    mipiano

    Published on May 04, 2021
    About :

    One spring night, in late March, as far back as 1839, Modest was born. Maybe it was as cloudy and dark as the video footage I have used for this video shows, we don't know now anymore. But we know that he lived in a rural part of Russia for his first ten years before he went to study at an elite school in Saint Petersburg. His mother, a trained pianist herself, started to teach him to play the piano when he was six years old, and he showed talent and great skills. During his studies in the military field, he met other very important Russian musicians like Alexander Borodin, Mikhail Glinka and Mily Balakirev. That is where Modest Musorgsky started to open his musical mind to more wide picture, as until then his knowledge was just pianistic. Balakirev was the person who started to fill these gaps in his musical knowledge, playing together piano duets of Beethoven, Schumann and Schubert symphonies, among others.

    Many musicians have a difficult time in both their personal and professional career. With his 20 years behind him, he already suffered a painful crisis. Later, he had his peaks and dips again, and alcoholism was his life partner too. Fortunately, he could maintain his creative moments in some parts of his life, so in 1874 he writes the famous piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. It is based on pictures by the artist, architect, and designer Viktor Hartmann. It has ten movements (each one inspired by a picture by Hartmann) and between some of them, we can hear the Promenade (that Promenade glimpses don't count as a movement) that represents his walk among the artworks. He composed it for piano, but lately, it was arranged for orchestra too.

    Musorgsky.jpeg
    Excerpt for the music sheets of The Old Castle

    In this video, I play the second movement, The Old Castle. It has a repetitive left-hand pattern, however later develops in a much more complex structure. In the photo, we can see the calm beginning. I recorded the audio on Saturday late evening, it was almost night. Planned for a Sad Sunday post, but then we spent that day in an unplanned mountain hiking, which was awesome. We had a lot of fun and laughter, something completely opposite to this musical piece.

    Also, I wanted to add some other video footage but finally could not make it the way I initially wanted. Anyway, I think that those black clouds found here match the atmosphere of this movement from the Pictures at an Exhibition, composed by Modest Musorgsky.

    Tags :

    music musicforlife classical-music monochrome dark

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