Modest Moussorgsky was also a dilettante composer who made his career as a civil servant. Unquestionably the greatest of the "Mighty Handful", he is also generally considered the most "Russian" of them all, and his strikingly original ideas exerted enormous influence on later composers - not only his countrymen - as well as on his contemporaries. He was the youngest son of a well-to-do landowner, but had peasant blood from his paternal grandmother, who was a serf. Modest had his first piano lessons from his mother and could play short pieces by Liszt at the age of seven. From 1849 to 1854 he took lessons from a pupil of the great German virtuoso Henselt, but he still had not studied harmony or composition. In 1852 he entered the Cadet School of the Guard in St Petersburg, where in his first year he composed a polka dedicated to his schoolfellows, which his father had published. The school choir director encouraged him to study the music of Russian composers. In 1857 he met the established composer Alexander Dargomïzhsky (1813-69), César Cui, a young amateur like himself, and eventually Balakirev, whom he persuaded to give him lessons in musical form.

A visit to Moscow in 1859 was a profound patriotic experience for Moussorgsky, who wrote to his new teacher: "I have undergone a sort of rebirth: I have been brought near to everything Russian."

Moussorgsky was depressive by nature, and after the death of his mother, in 1865, he took to drink, leaving many of his scores half-finished. This is why his works have so often been revised by others. He suffered a nervous crisis in 1858, shortly after resigning his commission; and he had another breakdown in 1860. Nervous irritability affected his relations with Balakirev, whom he felt kept him too tightly reined. When Moussorgsky failed to complete a Symphony in D, begun in 1861, Balakirev and Vladimir Stasov, an influential critic, and friend of the "Five", regretfully agreed that "Moussorgsky is almost an idiot", which, of course, was certainly not the case. Family financial difficulties followed the liberation of the serfs in 1861, with which, however, Moussorgsky sympathized. During that year, spent at the family's country estate, taking stock of his life, he wrote to Balakirev: "I see that although I never shirked, I have accomplished but very little, because of my Russian laziness. I have no particular faith in my talent, but I do not mistrust it. I will and shall work to the full measure of my strength: but I am still trying to discover a line of work in which I can be really useful."

In 1863 he entered the civil service, moving back to St Petersburg, but four years later he was dismissed when staff cuts were made in his department. In 1868, he began work on his masterpiece, the opera Boris Godounov,and he completed it the following year. After it was rejected for performance by the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in 1871, Moussorgsky revised the opera, and the first act finale was performed at a concert in St Petersburg in February 1872. But the second version was also rejected, in autumn, by the Imperial theatres. Boris was finally performed, and with considerable success, at the Mariinsky on 8 February 1874. Unfortunately this had a detrimental effect on Moussorgsky, inflating his self-esteem. In 1874 he also composed the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition, but Stasov was unable to persuade him to join him on a visit to Weimar to see Liszt, who had been greatly impressed by Moussorgsky's cycle of piano pieces, The Nursery.

In 1878 alcoholism took increasing hold of him, and at the suggestion of Stasov, who hoped it might cure him, he changed government departments; but in 1880 he was finally forced to leave the civil service altogether. He faced destitution, but two groups of friends offered him monthly pensions totaling 180 rubles if he would agree to finish his operas Khovanshchina, begun in 1872, and Sorochintsy Fair, begun in 1874. Both, however, were left unfinished at his death. He made his last public appearance on 15 February 1881, when Rimsky-Korsakov conducted one of his works, but he declined badly after that. After suffering fits of alcoholic epilepsy, he was admitted to a St Petersburg military hospital, where he died on 28 March.

Harvey Sachs

Biographical notes (c) 1996, by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

A selection of major works:

Orchestral: A Night on the Bare Mountain, Pictures at an Exhibition (orchestration: Maurice Ravel).

Instrumental solo: Gopak, The Nursery, Pictures at an Exhibition.

Vocal: Songs.

Stage works: Operas: Boris Godounov, Khovanshchina (orchestration: Shostakovich), Salammbô (left incomplete).