Editing Modest Mussorgsky (section)

==Works==
{{main|List of compositions by Modest Mussorgsky}}
{{Listen|type=music|pos=right|filename=Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky - Il Vecchio Castello - Saxophone and Piano - David Hernando Vitores.ogg|title=Il Vecchio Castello|description=Performed by David Hernando}}
Mussorgsky's works, while strikingly novel, are stylistically [[Romantic music|Romantic]] and draw heavily on Russian musical themes. He has been the inspiration for many Russian composers, including most notably [[Dmitri Shostakovich]] (in his late symphonies) and [[Sergei Prokofiev]] (in his operas).

In 1868 or 1869, Mussorgsky composed the opera ''[[Boris Godunov (opera)|Boris Godunov]]'', about the life of the Russian [[tsar]], but it was rejected by the [[Mariinsky Theatre|Mariinsky Opera]]. Mussorgsky thus edited the work, making a final version in 1874. The early version is considered darker and more concise than the later version, but also more crude. [[Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]] re-orchestrated the opera in 1896 and revised it in 1908. The opera has also been revised by other composers, notably Shostakovich, who made two versions, one for film and one for stage.

The opera ''[[Khovanshchina]]'' was unfinished and unperformed when Mussorgsky died, but it was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and received its premiere in 1886 in [[Saint Petersburg]]. This opera was also revised by Shostakovich. ''[[The Fair at Sorochyntsi]]'', another opera, was left incomplete at his death but a dance excerpt, the [[Gopak]], is frequently performed.

Mussorgsky's most imaginative and frequently performed work is the cycle of piano pieces describing paintings in sound called ''[[Pictures at an Exhibition]]''. This composition, best known through an orchestral arrangement by [[Maurice Ravel]], was written in commemoration of his friend, the architect [[Viktor Hartmann]].

Mussorgsky's single-movement orchestral work ''[[Night on Bald Mountain]]'' enjoyed broad popular recognition in the 1940s when it was featured, in tandem with [[Franz Schubert|Schubert]]'s "[[Ellens dritter Gesang|Ave Maria]]", in the 1940 [[Walt Disney Pictures|Walt Disney]] animated film ''[[Fantasia (1940 film)|Fantasia]]''.

Among the composer's other works are a number of songs, including three [[song cycle]]s: ''[[The Nursery]]'' (1872), ''[[Sunless (song cycle)|Sunless]]'' (1874) and ''[[Songs and Dances of Death]]'' (1877); plus ''[[Song of the Flea|Mephistopheles' Song of the Flea]]'' and many others. Important early recordings of songs by Mussorgsky were made by tenor [[Vladimir Rosing]] in the 1920s and 1930s.<ref>Juynboll (1991: pp. 194–96).</ref> Other recordings have been made by [[Boris Christoff]] between 1951 and 1957 and by [[Sergei Leiferkus]] in 1993.<ref>Kozinn (2004: pp. 143–47).</ref>