Movements
Vladimir Stasov's program, identified below, and the six known extant pictures suggest that the ten pieces comprising the suite correspond to eleven pictures by Hartmann, with Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle accounting for two. The five Promenade movements, consisting of an introduction and four links, are not numbered among the ten pictures. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Promenade movements are untitled in the composer's manuscript.
The enduring popularity of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition lies in the satisfaction it offers both at first hearing and in repeated visits. The variety of invention and distinctive character of each movement appeal at once. Visual motives find vivid aural form: clocks, bells, chants, feathers, flames, climb and descent. The piece rewards additional hearings with new relationships constantly to be discovered. The first two movements of the suite—one grand, one grotesque—find mirrored counterparts, and apotheoses, at the end. The suite traces a journey that begins at an art exhibit, but the line between observer and observed vanishes at the Catacombs when the journey takes on a different character. For all the variety individual movements display in musical invention, each springs from a kernel in the opening melody. The Promenade theme provides distinctive "cells" of two and three notes that generate themes and accompaniment figures throughout the piece.
The recording accompanying this explanation is by the Skidmore College Orchestra and provided courtesy of Musopen.
Read more about this topic: Pictures At An Exhibition
Famous quotes containing the word movements:
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
“The movements of the eyes express the perpetual and unconscious courtesy of the parties.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Awareness of the stars and their light pervades the Koran, which reflects the brightness of the heavenly bodies in many verses. The blossoming of mathematics and astronomy was a natural consequence of this awareness. Understanding the cosmos and the movements of the stars means understanding the marvels created by Allah. There would be no persecuted Galileo in Islam, because Islam, unlike Christianity, did not force people to believe in a “fixed” heaven.”
—Fatima Mernissi, Moroccan sociologist. Islam and Democracy, ch. 9, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. (Trans. 1992)