Mussorgsky: Vocal Works

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Explore the complete catalog of Vocal compositions by Mussorgsky. This curated list includes composition years, historical Wikipedia context, and interactive audio to add specific tracks directly to your listening queue.

Title Year Actions
A Society Tale: The Goat

The following is a list of compositions by Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky.

Angel vopiyashe, for a cappella chorus
At Daddy's Gate, for chorus

The 33rd Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 20, 1991. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. Quincy Jones was the night's biggest winner, winning a total of six awards including Album of the Year.

Bez solntsa

Sunless (Russian: Без солнца, Bez Solntsa, literally Without Sun) is a song cycle by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, written in 1874 and arranged for voice and piano. The song cycle is set to poems by Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a relative of the composer. Mussorgsky chose six unpublished poems for the cycle by Golenishchev-Kutuzov, whom he had recently met. These poems comprise a loose narrative that is nostalgic, surreal, and pessimistic, dwelling upon lost love, romantic rejection, and doubts from the protagonist's past, culminating in a contemplation of death. This narrative is believed to be in part autobiographical; musicologist Richard Taruskin characterized it as the voice of "a neurotically self-absorbed, broken-down aristocrat." Scholars have speculated that this pessimism may have arisen from the poor reception of Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov, the death of Mussorgsky's friends Viktor Gartmann and Nadezhda Opochinina in 1873-74, tensions in Mussorgsky's relationship with Golenishchev-Kutuzov, and/or the class tensions of the decade. Sunless was described by scholar Simon Perry as "aesthetically and stylistically anomalous" among Mussorgsky's work, makes use of symmetrical or “synthetic” chromaticism. The song cycle, like Boris Godunov, met a scathing reception, and Mussorgsky did not mention it in his autobiography.

Detskaya

The Nursery (Russian: Детская, Detskaya, literally Children's [Room]) is a song cycle by Modest Mussorgsky set to his own lyrics, composed between 1868 and 1872. The cycle was published in two series. Only the first two songs survive of the second series.

Eh, My Boundless Freedom, for chorus
Gde tï, zvezdochka?
Gopak

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (; Russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский, romanized: Modest Petrovich Musorgsky; IPA: [mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj] ; 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five." He was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period and strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. Many of Mussorgsky's works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. For many years, Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers. Many of his most important compositions have posthumously come into their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also available. At the State Institute for Art Studies in Moscow, M. P. Musorgsky's Complete Works: Academic Edition is being published. As of 2026, six volumes have been issued, including the opera Boris Godunov: two volumes of the vocal score (2020) and four volumes of the full score (2025). The vocal score was prepared by Nadezhda Teterina and Evgeny Levashev (1944–2022). The full score was prepared by Evgeny Levashev, Nadezhda Teterina, and Roman Berchenko.

Iz slyoz moikh
Joshua, for chorus

Salammbô (Russian: Саламбо, Salambo) [alternative title: The Libyan (Russian: Ливиец, Liviyets)] is an unfinished opera in four acts by Modest Mussorgsky. The fragmentary Russian language libretto was written by the composer, and is based on the novel Salammbô (1862) by Gustave Flaubert, but includes verses taken from poems by Vasiliy Zhukovsky, Apollon Maykov, Aleksandr Polezhayev, and other Russian poets. Salammbô was Mussorgsky's first major attempt at an opera. He worked on the project from 1863 to 1866, completing six numbers before losing interest. In 1865 Mussorgsky's mother died and he felt the loss deeply. There are sources indicating Mussorgsky composed more but did not write down some further scenes, in particular a love scene featuring Mathô and Salammbô. A 1872 drawn-up catalogue mentions a Salammbô scene, unlike the presently known material, completed in 1865.

Klassik

Magdalena Kožená, Lady Rattle (Czech: [ˈmaɡdalɛna ˈkoʒɛnaː]; born 26 May 1973) is a Czech mezzo-soprano.

Kolïbel'naya Eryomushki
Kolïbel'naya pesnya
Mephistopheles' Song of the Flea

The "Song of the Flea" (Russian: Песня о блохе) is a song with piano accompaniment, composed by Modest Mussorgsky in 1879. The lyrics are from the Russian translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust.

Na Dnepre
Noch

Night on Bald Mountain (Russian: Ночь на лысой горе, romanized: Noch′ na lysoy gore), also known as Night on the Bare Mountain, is a series of compositions by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881). Inspired by Russian literary works and legend, Mussorgsky composed a "musical picture", St. John's Eve on Bald Mountain (Russian: Иванова ночь на лысой горе, romanized: Ivanova noch′ na lysoy gore) on the theme of a Witches' Sabbath occurring at Bald Mountain on St. John's Eve, which he completed on that very night, 23 June 1867. Together with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko (1867), it is one of the first tone poems by a Russian composer. Although Mussorgsky was proud of his youthful effort, his mentor, Mily Balakirev, refused to perform it. To salvage what he considered worthy material, Mussorgsky attempted to insert his Bald Mountain music, recast for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, into two subsequent projects—the collaborative opera-ballet Mlada (1872), and the opera The Fair at Sorochyntsi (1880). However, Night on Bald Mountain was never performed in any form during Mussorgsky's lifetime. In 1886, five years after Mussorgsky's death, Rimsky-Korsakov published an arrangement of the work, described as a "fantasy for orchestra." Some musical scholars consider this version to be an original composition of Rimsky-Korsakov, albeit one based on Mussorgsky's last version of the music, for The Fair at Sorochyntsi: I need hardly remind the reader that the orchestral piece universally known as 'Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain' is an orchestral composition by Rimsky-Korsakov based on the later version of the Bare Mountain music which Mussorgsky prepared for Sorochintsy Fair. It is through Rimsky-Korsakov's version that Night on Bald Mountain achieved lasting fame. Premiering in Saint Petersburg in 1886, the work became a concert favourite. Half a century later, the work obtained perhaps its greatest exposure through the Walt Disney animated film Fantasia (1940), featuring an arrangement by Leopold Stokowski, based on Rimsky-Korsakov's version. Mussorgsky's tone poem was not published in its original form until 1968. It has started to gain exposure and become familiar to modern audiences.

Ozornik
Seminarist

The following is a list of compositions by Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky.

Softly the Spirit Flew up to Heaven

The following is a list of compositions by Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky.

Songs and Dances of Death

Songs and Dances of Death (Russian: Песни и пляски смерти, Pesni i plyaski smerti) is a song cycle for voice (usually bass or bass-baritone) and piano by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, written in the mid-1870s, to poems by Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a relative of the composer. Each song deals with death in a poetic manner although the depictions are realistic in that they reflect experiences not uncommon in 19th century Russia: child death, death in youth, drunken misadventure and war. The song cycle is considered Mussorgsky's masterpiece in the genre.

Sorochintsï Fair: Dream of the Peasant Gritsko, for chorus and orchestra

The Fair at Sorochyntsi (Russian: Сорочинская ярмарка, Sorochinskaya yarmarka, Sorochyntsi Fair) is a comic opera in three acts by Modest Mussorgsky, composed between 1874 and 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The composer wrote the libretto, which is based on Nikolai Gogol's short story of the same name, from his early (1832) collection of stories Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. The opera remained unfinished and unperformed at Mussorgsky's death in 1881. Today, the completion by Vissarion Shebalin has become the standard.

Strekotun'ya beloboka
The Destruction of Sennacherib, for chorus

The following is a list of compositions by Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky.

The Street Urchin

Boris Godunov (Russian: Борис Годунов, romanized: Borís Godunóv ) is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881). The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar (1598 to 1605) during the Time of Troubles, and his nemesis, the False Dmitriy (reigned 1605 to 1606). The Russian-language libretto was written by the composer, and is based on the 1825 drama Boris Godunov by Aleksandr Pushkin, and, in the Revised Version of 1872, on Nikolay Karamzin's History of the Russian State. Among major operas, Boris Godunov shares with Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos (1867) the distinction of having an extremely complex creative history, as well as a great wealth of alternative material. The composer created two versions—the Original Version of 1869, which was rejected for production by the Imperial Theatres, and the Revised Version of 1872, which received its first performance in 1874 in Saint Petersburg. Boris Godunov has often been subjected to cuts, recomposition, re-orchestration, transposition of scenes, or conflation of the original and revised versions. Several composers, chief among them Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and Dmitri Shostakovich, have created new editions of the opera to "correct" perceived technical weaknesses in the composer's original scores. Although these versions held the stage for decades, Mussorgsky's individual harmonic style and orchestration are now valued for their originality, and revisions by other hands have fallen out of fashion. In the 1980s, Boris Godunov was closer to the status of a repertory piece than any other Russian opera, even Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and is the most recorded Russian opera.

Yarema's Song

List of all Shevchenko National Prize laureates ordered by year of reception.

Yevreyskaya pesnya