He is indeed the false dawn of modern music.
Moussorgsky
The music of Moussorgsky comes up out of a dense and livid ground. It
comes up out of a ground that lies thickly packed beneath our feet, and
that is wider than the widest waste, and deeper than the bottomless
abysses of the sea. It comes up from a soil that descends downward
through all times and ages, through all the days of humankind, down to
the very foundations of the globe itself. For it grows from the flesh of
the nameless, unnumbered multitudes of men condemned by life throughout
its course to misery. It has its roots where death and defeat have been.
It has its roots in all bruised and maimed and frustrated flesh, in all
flesh that might have borne a god and perished barren. It has its root
in every being who has been without sun, in every being who has suffered
cold and hunger and disease, and pierces down and touches every
voiceless woe, every defeat that man has ever known. And out of that sea
of mutilated flesh it rises like low, trembling speech, halting and
inarticulate and broken. It has no high, compelling accent, no
eloquence. And yet, it has but to lift its poor and quavering tones, and
the splendor of the world is blotted out, and the great, glowing
firmament is made a sorrowful gray, and, in a single instant, we have
knowledge of the stern and holy truth, know the terrible floor upon
which we tread, know what man has ever suffered, and what our own
existences can only prove to be.
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