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Mind the Music and the Step – Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition

Posted by Kathleen Benton on Jun 10, 2009

‘Modest’ seems an odd choice of name for someone who made such an exhibition of himself.  Be that as it may, the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s well-known work, Pictures from an Exhibition, often comes to mind whenever I visit an art gallery to look at paintings. 

On a recent visit to London I managed to fit in a visit to the wonderful National Gallery.  Living as I do about 100 miles from London I don’t manage to get there anything like as often as I would like to.  Still, it’s not as if I lived on the other side of the world and had to try and fit everything into a single visit.  It is a real dilemma for a visitor to a great city, rich in museums and galleries, and with countless other things to do besides, to decide what to see and what to leave out.  But no visitors to London should miss seeing the famous Trafalgar Square.  The pigeons aren’t as welcome there as they used to be, but the spectacular column in honour of Lord Nelson is one place in London where you really must have your photo taken.  Then it’s but a few steps to the National Gallery, and even those with only a passing interest in art would be foolish to miss that.  But what are people to do once they are inside?  There is just so much to see.  With a limited time schedule and so much on offer is there perhaps some clever and sensible way to set about visiting an art gallery?   It might be that Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition can offer some ideas. 

I suppose if I had equipped myself with a clipboard and assumed an official air, I could just have sounded out a cross-section of the many visitors I saw at the National Gallery and asked them how they were using their time there.  I was certainly curious as to why so many of them were to be found in the section devoted to 19th century French painting.  Were these paintings the ’star attractions’ in the National Gallery?  Did the works of Monet and Renoir and Degas attract such crowds because they were the artists that people knew something about?  There is no reason at all why someone who enjoys Impressionist paintings shouldn’t want especially to view some, but was it enthusiasm alone that had brought so many people all to the same section of the Gallery?  It might just be that because the gallery housing the 19th century French paintings is one of the first the visitor arrives at on climbing the entrance stairs is the likeliest explanation of why it is so popular! 

But to return to Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition, it was the early death of his friend, the artist and architect Viktor Hartmann, that occasioned the writing of this work for piano (also given an orchestral arrangement).  Mussorgsky was among the visitors at an exhibition later held of Hartmann’s work and Pictures from an Exhibition is a musical representation of that visit.  The various pictures all have titles and Mussorgsky so cleverly depicts them in sound that we can almost see them in our mind’s eye.  As it happens, history has not been kind to Hartmann and most of his paintings are lost.  So, by this quirk of circumstance, Mussorgsky’s representation in sound is now all that we have should we want to ’see’ the Hartmann paintings which were on view at the exhibition. 

Naturally it is the paintings themselves that provide the main focus of interest and enjoyment to the listener.  And how well they are brought to life!  There is the lumbering Polish cart on enormous wheels being drawn by oxen in the picture entitled Bydlo.  We can vividly imagine the busy market scene at Limoges with a group of French women arguing and gossiping.  And the last picture is perhaps the best known of all where The Great Gate of Kiev is depicted with an awesome grandeur and in true Russian style. 

However there is something else to notice in Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition.  It is the snatch of music at the opening of the work which also appears as a recurrent theme throughout.  It is called the promenade and it is meant to suggest the visitor’s progress through the exhibition, the visitor in this case being Mussorgsky himself.  When first heard it sounds firm and resolute and comes to a definite conclusion as if suggesting that the visitor having entered the exhibition has arrived at the first picture he intended to see.  Thereafter, the promenade provides a link between the musical ‘pictures’, suggesting the visitor walking from one to another. 

But just listen more attentively to the promenade.  Sometimes it continues for a time only to break off abruptly in mid flow.  We realize that that the visitor, having had his attention taken by one particular picture, has stopped at once to take it in.  At other times it doesn’t occur at all between pictures: the visitor’s gaze passes naturally from one picture to its neighbor and so he just pauses where he is.  There are times when the promenade unfolds at length; at other times we hear only a brief snatch, so that we have the idea of the visitor moving about the gallery as he explores  the variety of pictures on display. 

One last thing to notice about the promenade is that it never sounds quite the same each time we hear it.  Sometimes it has a pensive quality; at others a light touch, signifying that the visitor’s steps are somehow responding to what he has just been looking at.  And it also has a rather unusual ‘pace’, generally with five beats in each measure.  People march to music with four beats, and they dance waltzes to three.  The promenade, with its seemingly clumsy walking beat, is showing us that the action of walking about the exhibition is dictated wholly by what captures the eye — a step here; a step there; an unexpected change of direction as one particular picture captures the attention — or possibly even because the visitor is so engrossed in the pictures that sudden deviation is required in order to avoid bumping into someone else! 

Well of course there can never be any hard and fast rule about viewing works of art; Mussorgsky’s promenade simply makes us think about it.  Undoubtedly with any great painting the more we study it and the more we find out about its background and the intentions of its creator the more it will have to say to us.  However we must always remain open and receptive to the delight of first impressions, however brief and superficial they must at times be.  An impression, once formed, remains in the memory, and it can always be returned to later.  And mention of the word ‘impression’ brings us back to the people in the 19th century French section in London’s National Gallery.  “You can’t have too much of a good thing,” might have been their answer if I had questioned the reason for their apparent enthusiasm.  Well, perhaps you can — if it is at the expense of all the other things you are missing.  And that, I think, is what the promenade in Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition might just be trying to tell us.

Howard Marshall

Click here to get Free Music Downloads at EZ-Tracks.com

If you would like to listen to the entire compostion for piano of Pictures from an Exhibition click on this link:  Serg van Gennip – Music

 (Click on images to enlarge and read details.  Click again to return to page.)

Ilya Yefimovich Repin, Portrait of the Composer Modest Mussorgsky, 1881.  Oil on canvas. 69 × 57 cm. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.  Image Source:  musopen.com.  Musopen.com also features recordings of the complete composition for orchestra.

All other art works featured are by Viktor Hartmann (1834-1873). Catacomb, Bydlo, Plan for a City Gate, and Egg progressively.

Viktor Hartmann photograph and art images courtesy of Wikipedia. 

© 2009 All rights reserved Kathleen Benton | You Can Hire an Artist

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