About this Piece

When Russian painter and architect Viktor Hartmann died suddenly in 1873, the arts community was shaken—especially his close friend Modest Mussorgsky. The two shared an enthusiasm for Russian folklore and fairy tales as well as the belief that Russian art should be less abstract and more reflective of real life. Following Hartmann’s memorial exhibition of over 400 artworks, Mussorgsky composed Pictures at an Exhibition as a musical depiction of strolling through the gallery.

Of the 16 sections of Pictures at an Exhibition, 10 represent 11 Hartmann pictures (“Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle” depicts two). Only six of the artworks exist today. The six other sections are the “promenade” and variations on it. 

Promenade. Mussorgsky’s meandering from picture to picture is represented by the irregular rhythm—the typical phrase has 11 beats—and ponderous feel: Mussorgsky was a heavy man. The heterophonic texture (a single musical line that breaks into harmony) is characteristic of Russian liturgical and folk music.  

Gnomus. This picture is now lost, but critic Vladimir Stasov, the exhibition organizer and a godfather figure to Russian artists, described a nutcracker shaped like a gnome, “the nuts being inserted in the gnome’s mouth,” and which “accompanies his actions with savage shrieks.”  

Promenade. A quiet, reflective variation that bridges the mood from the grotesquery of the gnome to: 

Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle). According to Stasov, the picture, also lost, is a sketch of a troubadour singing in front of a medieval castle.  

Promenade. Vigorous, with the melody pounded out in octaves, it is a stark contrast to the pictures it links. 

Tuileries (Quarrel of children at play). Mussorgsky had a deft ear for the sound of children, perhaps because he enjoyed playing with them and may have been more at ease with children than with adults. 

Bydło (Polish Oxcart). The cart bursts into the scene, fortissimo, then rumbles away.

A brooding Promenade dissolves into: 

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks. Hartmann’s watercolor is a design for large egg-shaped costumes through which dancers’ limbs and heads protrude. Mussorgsky’s ballet is a scherzo and trio, the only standard forms in the suite.  

Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle. Mussorgsky owned (and loaned) these two pictures of Polish Jews to Stasov’s exhibition. Hartmann’s “Goldenberg” is prosperous and self-assured, while “Schmuÿle” is poor and dejected. Mussorgsky’s “Goldenberg” is brusque and dominant, while his “Schmuÿle” is a musical depiction of a derogatory stereotype of Jews in Mussorgsky’s day.

Promenade. The grandness of this variation has been interpreted as Mussorgsky’s pride in having his two pictures be part of the exhibition.  

The Market at Limoges. This picture no longer exists, but Mussorgsky wrote, in French, two versions of a short scenario in which people with silly Gallic names exchange news about finding a lost cow or getting new dentures. It plunges abruptly into: 

Catacombs. A watercolor showing three men, including Hartmann, viewing the ancient tombs with a lantern that illuminates a stack of skulls. The piece is largely a sequence of jarring chords that leads directly into:  

Cum mortuis in lingua mortua. The promenade theme is set against an eerily drifting chromatic line. Mussorgsky wrote that “the creative spirit of the dead Hartmann leads me to the skulls and invokes them; the skulls begin to glow.”

The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga). A familiar figure in Russian folklore, the witch Baba Yaga lives in a forest hut built on chicken legs so that it can turn to face intruders. She eats children, crushing their bones in a giant mortar that she rides through the forest. Hartmann designed a clock in the shape of her hut, and Mussorgsky sets his tempo at one bar per second—the speed at which a clock ticks. This movement bears a striking resemblance to one of Mussorgsky’s “Remembrance of Childhood” piano pieces called “First punishment: The nanny locks me in a dark room.” It leads without pause to: 

The Great Gate of Kyiv. Hartmann considered his drawing for a competition to design a gateway “to commemorate the event of April 4, 1866,” his best work. The contest was called off, perhaps due to the sensitivities around the attempted assassination of the Czar in Kyiv on April 4, 1866. Hartmann’s ambitious design inspired Mussorgsky’s grand processional, interspersed with quieter sections based on a Russian hymn. Toward the end, an episode of ringing bells merges into the promenade theme, as if Mussorgsky is stepping into the picture before the glorious end. —Howard Posner