Musorgsky Bibliography

Biography: Orlova and Leyda include the majority of the documentary evidence about Musorgsky's life. Both are very readable; there's some overlap between them.  Seroff is gossipy and maybe inexact, but he describes Musorgsky's Russian context very well, with lots of interesting details about his musical peers (including the amazing Borodin). Emerson and Taruskin present their own points of view on Musorgsky's life; by and large I think that their "debunking of the Musorgsky myth" is off the mark. Hoops' piece in Malcolm Hamrick Brown's collection should be read, along with Orlova and Leyda, as a corrective to Emerson and Taruskin's tendentious revisionism. Calvocoressi is good but somewhat dated; the 1962 book is mostly a quick version of the 1956 book, but there's some new material by Gerald Abraham, who's effectively a co-author.

Music: Russ's book was best for me at my intermediate level. He sums up Musorgsky's musical style very briefly and effectively. Brown is probably better, but he's more demanding and his musical analysis is scattered across discussions of many particular passages . Calvocoressi (1956, pp. 234-300) is good. Morosan in Brown's anthology is excellent on Musorgsky's relationship to traditional Russian choral styles. Oldani in Emerson and Oldani mostly writes about Musorgsky's tonal structures and expressive use of particular keys and of key changes. Taruskin has surprisingly little to say about the music. LeRoux makes a detailed comparison of Musorgsky's, Rimsky-Korsakoff's, and Shostakovich's orchestrations of Boris, strongly favoring Mussorgsky's. He's got a lot of other good stuff on Boris too.

Drama: Taruskin, Emerson in Emerson and Oldani, and Orlova and Schneerson in Brown's anthology all talk about Musorgsky's use of literary and historical sources. Musorgsky tends to be underrated as a writer, as a dramatist, and as a reader of history. LeRoux is the only author I've seen who has noted that all of the gorgeous choruses in Boris Godunov operas are sung by unfree people who don't necessarily understand what they're singing about.

Bibliography

Batchelor, Jennifer and John, Nicholas, Khovanshchina, Calder / English National Opera, 1994.

Brown, David, Musorgsky, Oxford, 2002.

Brown, Malcolm Hamrick, ed., Musorgsky In Memoriam, UMI Research Press, 1982.

Calvocoressi, M. D., Mussorgsky, Collier, 1962.

Calvocoressi, M.D., Modest Mussorgsky, His Life and Works, Essential Books, 1956.

Emerson, Caryl and Oldani, Robert William, Modest Musorgsky and Boris Godunov, Cambridge, 1994.

Emerson, Caryl, The Life of Musorgsky, Cambridge, 1999.

John, Nicholas, Boris Godunov, John Calder / English National Opera, 1982.

Leyda, Jay and Bertensson, Sergei, The Musorgsky Reader, Norton, 1947.

Le Roux, Maurice, Moussorgski: Boris Godounov,  Aubier-Montaigne, 1980.

Orlova, Alexandra, Musorgsky Remembered, 1991.

Russ, Michael, Musorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition, Cambridge, 1992.

Seroff, Victor, Modeste Moussorgsky, Funk & Wagnalls, 1968.

Taruskin, Richard, Musorgsky, Princeton, 1993.

Maurice le Roux, Moussorgski: Boris Godounov, Aubier Montaigne, 1980.

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