Musorgsky: His Life and Works by David s> Brown (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 99 gender discourse in Marina Tsvetaeva's Monfrerefeminin.Lettrea l'Amazone(first published in I979). Opening with Piotr Urbaniski's perusal of forbidden male friendship in Neo-Latin Poetry, the final section contains five essays on non-Slavic writers. Gabriela Matuszek discusses the 'corsetted libido' of Ibsen's heroines, Wlodzimierz Szturc writes beautifully on Fredrico Garcia Lorca's quest for identity through the memory of childhood, and Malgorzata Sugiera investigates 'the presence of absence' in Marguerite Duras' art of play writing. Barbara Smole'n considers Luce Irigaray's 'mimetic' conception of woman's literary production and Agata Araszkiewicz Irigaray's definition of the relationship between mother and daughter. Inevitably the price of covering so many works and authors in one volume is a sense of overall cohesion, while the 'loose discussion' nature of many of the contributions may be achieved at the expense of depth. That said, the Festschriftis worth purchasing for the high-calibre essays of Fieguth, Fiut, Iwasi6w, Heller, Binswanger and Szturc alone. The only false notes in this accomplished endeavour come on the more technical level: there are too many uncalled-for typos, above all in the rendering of non-Polish names and titles, and, more importantly, there is no information on the contributors. Nonetheless, this is an important book. The articles offered in honour of German Ritz provide not only a rich and stimulating array of original material, particularly on Polish literature, but also introduce the individual outlook of a distinguished and daring personality to those who have thus far been unfamiliar with it. Department of Comparative Literature KNUT ANDREAs GRIMSTAD AJ'orwegian UniversityofScienceand Technology Brown, David. Musorgsky. His Lifeand Works. The Master Musicians. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2002. XVii + 39I pp. Illustrations . Notes. Appendices. Select Bibliography.Index. 25s.00: $35.00. BESTknown for his studies of Glinka and Chaikovskii,David Brown turns here to the most originalmusical genius of the nineteenth century, celebrated recently in an excellent short monograph by Caryl Emerson (see SEER, 78, 2000, 3, 576-77). It is a pity that the latter came too late to be taken into account by Brown, although it does appearin the Bibliography.In particular, it deserves a place in Brown's characteristicallygenerous review of earlier writingon thiscomposer. The qualitiesof clarityand thoroughnessfamiliarto readers of ProfessorBrown's earlier work are also in evidence here, making this studyof Musorgskiilikelyto sharethe honourswith Emerson'sbrieferbut highly originalbook as standardworksfor some considerabletime to come. The biographical sections of Brown's study are thoroughly based in contemporary letters and documents, chosen judiciously and taken from mainly translatedRussian sources. As in earlierworkshis style is straightforward and elegant without pretentiousness,apparentlyaimed at music lovers as much as those with a scholarly interest. He is particularlyjudicious and 100 SEER, 82, I, 2004 generous in his assessmentof Rimskii-Korsakov'spartin preservingMusorgskii 's works for posterity. Of the frequently heard accusations that Rimskii's re-writing was essentially for self-aggrandizement, he says, 'No accusation could have been more unjustified'(p. 36I) whilst,at the sametime, not skating over Rimskii'sblisteringlycriticalaswell as admiringremarkson Musorgskii's unconventional talent. The analyticalchaptersof the book are thoroughlyillustratedwith musical examples, apparentlychosen with the musicallyliterate amateur in mind, to show Musorgskii's particularly characteristic devices as well as the main themes fromhis all too slenderoeuvre. The eighteenth and last chapter is entitled 'Postlude:The Century Since', and traces the many and various attempts to rescue Musorgskii'sscattered and incomplete heritage. Whilst Brown is probably right to describe Shostakovich'sversions of Musorgskii'sscores as 'a service as unnecessaryas it was undesirable'(p. 363), he might have made a little more of the debt that the Soviet composer owed to his nineteenth-century predecessor. It is true that Musorgskiiwas a 'uniquefigurewho invents a world of stunningnovelty, yet who creates no school because, his genius being so largelyinstinctive,his style proves elusive and recycling it virtually impossible, except perhaps for details' (p. ix). Nonetheless, Shostakovich was far more inclined to draw parallels between himself and Musorgskii than with his other Russian and Soviet predecessors. Fourappendices add furthervalue to thisexcellent monograph:a Calendar of the composer'slife is paralleledby contemporarymusiciansand events, the latter going well beyond the borders of Russia; the List of...