Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Модест Петрович Мусоргский, 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five". He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.

Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.

For many years Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers. Many of his most important compositions have posthumously come into their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also available.

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The spelling and pronunciation of the composer's name has caused some confusion.

The family name derives from a 15th- or 16th-century ancestor, Roman Vasilyevich Monastyryov, who appears in the Velvet Book, the 17th-century genealogy of Russian boyars. Roman Vasilyevich bore the nickname "Musorga", and was the grandfather of the first Mussorgsky. The composer could trace his lineage to Rurik, the legendary 9th-century founder of the Russian state.

In Mussorgsky family documents the spelling of the name varies: "Musarskiy", "Muserskiy", "Muserskoy", "Musirskoy", "Musorskiy", and "Musurskiy". The baptismal record gives the composer's name as "Muserskiy".

In early (up to 1858) letters to Mily Balakirev, the composer signed his name "Musorskiy" (Мусoрскій).[3] The "g" made its first appearance in a letter to Balakirev in 1863.[4] Mussorgsky used this new spelling (Мусoргскій, Musorgskiy) to the end of his life, but occasionally reverted to the earlier "Musorskiy".[5][6] The addition of the "g" to the name was likely initiated by the composer's elder brother Filaret to obscure the resemblance of the name's root to an unsavory Russian word (мусoр (músor) — n. m. debris, rubbish, refuse)

Mussorgsky apparently did not take the new spelling seriously, and played on the "rubbish" connection in letters to Vladimir Stasov and to Stasov's family, routinely signing his name Musoryanin, roughly "garbage-dweller" (compare dvoryanin: "nobleman").

The first syllable of the name originally received the stress (i.e., MÚS-ər-skiy), and does so to this day in Russia and in the composer's home district. The mutability of the second-syllable vowel in the versions of the name mentioned above gives evidence that this syllable did not receive the stress.

The addition of the "g" and the accompanying shift in stress to the second syllable, sometimes described as a Polish variant, was supported by Filaret Mussorgsky's descendants until his line ended in the 20th century. Their example was followed by many influential Russians, such as Fyodor Shalyapin, Nikolay Golovanov, and Tikhon Khrennikov, who, perhaps dismayed that the great composer's name was "reminiscent of garbage", supported the erroneous second-syllable stress that has also become entrenched in the West.

The Western convention of doubling the first "s", which is not observed in scholarly literature (e.g., The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians), likely arose because in many Western European languages a single intervocalic /s/ often becomes voiced to /z/ (as in "music"), unlike in Slavic languages where it remains unvoiced. Doubling the consonant thus reinforces its voiceless sibilant /s/ sound.