Moussorgsky

MOUSSORGSKY--Oskar von Riesemann, translated by Paul England--Knopf ($5).

Great Russian writers are Gogol, Tolstoy, Turgeniev, Dostoievsky--products all of the first days when Russia dared declare herself artistically, when French frippery first seemed foolish and the longings of the Slavic soul important. Great Russian composers are Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Moussorgsky. They too with Glinka. Balakirev and Cui were pioneers in the school of realism. Yet compared with the less Russian Tchaikovsky their fame has spread so slowly that even today outside Russia Moussorgsky is known for his Boris Godounov alone and that in the refined version of Rimsky-Korsakov made popular by Basso Feodor Chaliapin.

Modest Petrovitch Moussorgsky wrote other music than Boris Godounov. Yet so little is known of it, so little of the man himself, that to many the new biography by Oskar von Riesemann will be news entirely. The story is of a young aristocrat who left military service to become a government clerk that he might have more time for music. Borodin remembered him in the early days as a foppish fellow who played bits from Trovatore and Traviata but that pretty stage passed swiftly. A peasant streak came out. Moussorgsky loved Russia and its history. He loved the people and the soil whence they came. He would put them in his music and that music would be unfixed by petty patterns. So the idea grew and out of it came songs with strange, bright har monies and crazy, reckless rhythms. Came Boris with its savage splendor and Tchaikovsky wrote: &"As for Moussorgsky's music, it can go to the devil for all I care -- it is a low, vile parody of the real thing." Came Khovantchina, The Fair at Sorotchintzy, The Marriage, miscellaneous cho ruses, compositions for piano, for orchestra. The artist grew but the man lost money, friends, reputation. When at 42, he died, it was alone, in a hospital, of delirium tremens. Then was he first hailed as a giant, then was his monument erected in the public square. Now, 50 years later, musical people find him increasingly important.