Pictures At An Exhibition

Pictures at an Exhibition was written in 1874 by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky to commemorate the death of his close friend, artist and painter Victor Hartmann. Originally scored for piano, the full piece, or sections of it, have been orchestrated many times in many different versions, most recently in 2019. The most famous of these orchestral versions was completed by the French composer Maurice Ravel in 1927. The famous conductor Polish Leopold Stokowski also orchestrated several sections in 1939. Mussorgsky himself, while probably having intended to do an orchestral version, never did so, and never heard an orchestrated version in his lifetime.

The English band Emerson, Lake, and Palmer did a rock version in 1971, and the Japanese synthesizer virtuoso Isao Tomito did a complete keyboard synthesized version in 1976.

Pictures at an Exhibition was composed hurriedly for an Exhibit of Hartmann's paintings as a memorial to the artist. Many of the original paintings have been lost.

Pictures consists of 10 musical portraits of the paintings interspersed periodically by a Promenade, The Promanade is Mussorgsky himself walking between exhibits. As the piece progresses, some of the pictures begin to flow together without the Promenade. Pictures is a prime example of late nineteenth Romantic program music, music with a literary basis.

Promanade[edit]

Catacombs[edit]

Catacombs is a self-portrait of Hartmann holding a lantern in a catacomb. Mussorgsky wrote a subtext in Latin, Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (With the dead in a dead language). The Promenade appears within this picture for the first time.

Great Gate of Kiev[edit]

Hartmann won the national competition for a design to build the Great Gate of Kyiv, and the two often spoke of Mussorgsky writing the music for ceremonies after the Gate would be completed and opened. But the structure was never built. The Gate remained a dream they both shared.

Ravel's orchestrated his version backwards, beginning with the Great Gate of Kiev. The Promenade figures mightly in this final picture.

External link[edit]

• Pictures from an Exhibition. Pictures of What? Charles Dutoit, Chicago Symphony Orchestra.