The Roman god Janus is the deity of doors, gates, beginnings – basically any point that marks a transition from one state to another. The month of January is named after this god, being the start of a new year.
Tomorrow, this blog will have reached its birthday. It is now over 100,000 words – about as many as Huckleberry Finn, but only half of Moby Dick. I certainly haven’t written a great work of literature here, but even so, The Fine Art of Listening is now a rather large opus.
So as I approach this milestone, this doorway to the future, let’s take a grand, celebratory stroll through Mussorgsky‘s Gate of Kiev.
It’s easy to be scared of large animals with sharp teeth or scary humanoid creatures with exaggerated features. It’s also easy to be scared of clowns.
But what about when everyday household objects go bad? Say, an umbrella, or shoes? Maybe a broom? What about a magical flying mortar & pestle, or a house with chicken legs?
Enter Baba Yaga, a your classic witch, except that she flies around in a mortar and lives in a house with chicken legs. I suppose that makes her more scary? Or is it a ruse to confuse children long enough for her to catch them?
We’ve all done it – you wake up in the middle of the night with the greatest idea to have ever been had by anyone ever. You write it down on a scrap of paper, and go back to sleep. The next morning, you wake up, ready to start on your great idea. But first, some coffee. And you know, a good cup of coffee is best washed down with a cheese danish. After breakfast, well, you need to have a shower to really be awake. Then you sit down at your computer to start planning your project. Check your emails. Facebook. Watch some cat videos to get you in the mood. Your mother calls (interrupting your favorite video, no less!) Now it’s time for lunch.
You get the idea.
Modest Mussorgsky completed only one opera, Boris Godunov. However, he is best known for his Pictures at an Exhibition, and his musical nightmare A Night on Bald Mountain. It is likely you’ve heard these two great pieces, but here’s the thing: the version you know wasn’t actually written by Mussorgsky. Both were originally piano compositions that were later orchestrated by Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov respectively. And it doesn’t end there. When Mussorgsky died, left no fewer than NINE unfinished opera projects. Thankfully, his friends (a group of composers, known as the Mighty Handful, who were forging a distinct Russian musical style) completed some of the works he left undone. One of those is Khovanshchina, an opera which was finished again by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Mussorgsky’s marvelous sound is crafted from eastern European folk songs and scales against a rich modal accompaniment. It’s also important to remember that much of the magic of his music comes from having great orchestrators who finished the job for him.
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