Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition is a piano suite in ten movements, plus a recurring and varied Promenade theme, written in 1874 by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. It is a musical depiction of a tour of an exhibition of works by architect and painter Viktor Hartmann put on at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, following his sudden death in the previous year. Each movement of the suite is based on an individual work, some of which are lost.
Mussorgsky in 1874
Viktor Hartmann (1834–1873)
Mussorgsky's letter to Stasov, written while composing Pictures
Cover of first edition
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five". He was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.
The aristocratic Mussorgsky brothers—Filaret (also known as "Yevgeniy", left), and Modest (right), 1858
Monument on the site of the Mussorgky family house in Karevo, Pskov Oblast
Young Mussorgsky as a cadet in the Preobrazhensky Regiment of the Imperial Guard, 1856
Alexander Dargomyzhsky