Pictures at an Exhibition

“What a terrible blow!” exclaimed Modest Mussorgsky in a letter to the critic Vladimir Stasov in 1874. He then proceeded to paraphrase a famous passage from Shakespeare’s King Lear: “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, live on, when creatures like Hartmann must die?”

Viktor Hartmann, a gifted architect and painter and a close friend of Mussorgsky’s, had recently died at age 39. A commemorative exhibit of his paintings inspired Mussorgsky to pay musical tribute to his friend — a piano suite based on the composer’s impressions of the paintings. The suite was not performed or published during the composer’s lifetime, and it did not become widely known until Maurice Ravel orchestrated it in 1922. What’s more, originally written for piano, Pictures at an Exhibition did not become a regular part of the piano repertoire until the middle of the 20th century, after it had already been popularized by symphony orchestras.

From its conception, the original piece cried out for orchestration, partly because its piano writing was not idiomatic — Mussorgsky did not have the gift that composers such as Robert Schumann, Chopin, or Liszt had for creating music that fits the instrument so perfectly. But mostly because its sharply profiled and contrasting musical characteristics could be underscored to great effect when set for full orchestra. Other composers had already orchestrated it, but Ravel’s version enchanted the world.

In his piano cycle, Mussorgsky composed musical illustrations of 10 of Hartmann’s pictures. The pictures are connected — in the first half of the work, at any rate — by a “Promenade,” which depicts a visitor strolling through the gallery, from picture to picture. With each passing image, this melody changes as if the impression left by the last picture lingers as the visitor proceeds to the next painting.

The first picture, Gnomus, shows a toy nutcracker in the shape of a dwarf. The strange and unpredictable movements of this creature are depicted vividly. Then we hear the “Promenade” and are ushered into Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle), where a troubadour voices a wistful song in a medieval court. In Ravel’s orchestration, this haunting melody is played by the alto saxophone.

The next picture — preceded again by the “Promenade” — is Tuileries and depicts rowdy children fooling around in Paris’s famous gardens. It is followed immediately by Bydlo, a Polish oxcart, slowly approaching and then driving away as its ponderous melody crescendos before fading out.

A more lyrical but shorter “Prome­nade” leads into the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks in Their Shells. This scene is based on Hartmann’s designs for the ballet Trilbi at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. In the ballet, a group of children appeared dressed as canaries; others were said to have been “enclosed in eggs as in suits of armor,” with their legs sticking out of the eggshells.

The next picture is titled Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle. Hartmann had painted a number of characters from the Jewish ghetto in Sandomierz, Poland, and this movement is believed to represent an argument between a rich man and a poor one. The rich man, Goldenberg, is represented by a slow-moving unison melody stressing the augmented second (an interval used in certain forms of Jewish chant and folk music). The poor man, Schmuÿle, is characterized by a plaintive theme whose repeated notes seem to choke up with emotion. When the two themes are played simultaneously, Goldenberg’s commands the entire string section, while Schmuÿle’s is intoned by a single muted trumpet.

Limoges: The Market portrays the hustle and bustle of an open-air market in France where people are busy gossiping and quarrelling. Mussorgsky’s original manuscript contained a more detailed program which, although crossed out by the composer, provides amusing context:

The big news: Monsieur de Puissangeot has just recovered his cow ‘Fugitive.’ But the good wives of Limoges are not interested in this incident because Madame de Remboursac has acquired very fine porcelain dentures, while Monsieur de Panta-Pantaléon is still troubled by his obtrusive nose that remains as red as a peony.

What a contrast to immediately go from this bustling market to the Catacombs. Hartmann’s watercolor shows the artist, a friend, and their guide examining the underground burial chambers in Paris. On the right, one can see a large pile of skulls which, in Mussorgsky’s imagination, suddenly begins to glow. When the “Promenade” theme appears next, it is completely transfigured, and an inscription in the score reads: Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (With the dead in a dead language).

The next section, The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga), evokes the witch of Russian folk tales. According to legend, Baba Yaga flies through the woods in a giant mortar, luring children into her hut before eating them. Hartmann designed a clock in the form of the famous hut; it survives only as a sketch. Mussorgsky’s movement — whose rhythm recalls the ticking of a giant clock — has a mysterious-sounding middle section, after which the wilder and louder first material returns.

The “witch music” continues directly into the grand finale, The Great Gate of Kiev (spelled in the Anglicized form of its Russian name instead of the now-preferred Ukrainian spelling “Kyiv”). This movement was inspired by an ambitious design Hartmann submitted to a competition — and won — but it was never realized. To depict this immense architectural structure, Mussorgsky wrote a grandiose melody resembling a church hymn and set it in rich harmonies. This theme alternates with a more subdued second melody, harmonized like a chorale. Near the end, the “Promenade” theme is heard, leading directly into the magnificent final climax.

— Peter Laki

Peter Laki is a musicologist and frequent lecturer on classical music. He is a visiting associate professor of music, emeritus, at Bard College and was The Cleveland Orchestra’s program annotator from 1990 to 2007.