Great Russian Composers: Modest Mussorgsky

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Modest Mussorgsky was the most original and influential of the 19th century Russian nationalist composers. His songs, among the finest of the 19th century, reflect his desire to reproduce the rhythms of Russian speech. So also does his masterpiece, the opera Boris Godunov (1868). Mussorgsky's other major works include the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), orchestrated in 1922 by the French composer Maurice Ravel), the symphonic poem Night on Bare Mountain (1867) and the unfinished opera Kovanshchina completed by Rimsky-Korsakov.