Mussorgsky, Modest

a Stichvorlage manuscript for the first edition of the complete 56-bar song, notated in dark brown ink, on four three-stave systems per page, in Rimsky-Korsakov's precise calligraphic hand, with title and authorship inscriptions also by Rimsky-Korsakov ("N=1. Kot Matros M. P. Musorgsky / 1872 g.") on the first page, the title underlined in blue crayon, marked up by and for the printer in pencil

2 pages, c.15.3 x 33.3cm, cut down from a larger leaf, no place or date [St. Petersburg, 1882?], edges trimmed, horizontal and vertical folds, some splitting to horizontal fold, light browning

David Brown, Musorgsky: His Life and Works (Oxford, 2006), pp. 200-201

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, where appropriate
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THIS IS THE MANUSCRIPT SCORE OF A COMPLETE SONG BY MUSSORGSKY IN THE HAND OF HIS FRIEND AND ARDENT PROMOTER RIMSKY-KORSAKOV.

ORIGINAL SOURCES FOR MUSSORGSKY'S MUSIC ARE OF THE UTMOST RARITY AT AUCTION.  Rimsky-Korsakov was responsible for preserving, completing and revising Mussorgsky's music after his early death.

One of the greatest and most fruitful friendships in music was that between the bohemian, heavy-drinking, original genius Modest Mussorgsky and the brilliant technician and model professional musician Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, five years his junior. Both were members, together with César Cui, Aleksandr Borodin and Mily Balakirev, of the legendary artist collective known as "The Five" or "The Mighty Handful", founded in the 1860s with a view to forging a truly national school of Russian music. And at one time, early in their careers, the two men had shared a flat together, as well as a piano, in St. Petersburg. After Mussorgsky's untimely death in 1881, due to alcohol dependency, Rimsky went on to spend a good deal of his remaining 27 years in rescuing for posterity his friend's oeuvre, by completing Mussorgsky's fragments, orchestrating his compositions and arranging their publication.

One such work whose publication Rimsky-Korsakov oversaw was the present song, which was composed in 1872, to Mussorgsky's own words, and which, together with the song, "Poyekhal na palochke" [On the Hobbyhorse], was intended to be part of a larger cycle called "Na dache" [At the Dacha]. In the event, no further songs were composed for this cycle, and both songs appeared in print for the first time in Rimsky-Korsakov's edition of "Na dache" in 1882 - only a year after Mussorgsky's death. IT SEEMS PROBABLE THAT THE PRESENT MANUSCRIPT IN RIMSKY'S HAND WAS THE ONE USED FOR THIS EDITION. In 1908 the two songs of "Na dache" were published by V. Bessel & Co. together with the five songs forming Mussorgsky's cycle "Detskaya" [The Nursery].

In "Kot Matros" every turn of the story - the child's hunt for shade, her spying of the cat preying on the bird cage, the palpitations of the bullfinch, the interaction between the girl and the cat, the mis-planted swipe and the final lament to the girl's mother - is brilliantly captured with absolute precision by Mussorgsky's music. As David Brown has noted, what strikes one most strongly in this song 'is Mussorgsky's economy of notes, much of the first part running simply as a line of quavers, the voice doubling in discrete heterophony'.

Mussorgsky's own autograph, dated St. Petersburg, 15 August 1872, was described by Pavel Lamm in 1928 as belonging to the Findeisen Collection in Leningrad (St. Petersburg).