The songs
of Moussorgsky are things that can be recognized in each of their
moments, so deeply and completely distinctive they are. There is not a
bar of the collection called "Sans soleil" that is not richly and
powerfully new. The harmonies sound new, the melodies are free and
strange and expressive, the forms are solid and weighty as bronze and
iron. They are like lumps dug up out of the earth. The uttermost
simplicity obtains. And every stroke is decisive and meaningful.
Moussorgsky seems to have crept closer to life than most artists, to
have seized emotions in their nakedness and sharpness, to have felt with
the innocence of a child. One of his collections is entitled "La Chambre
d'Enfants." And that surprise and wonder at all the common facts of
life, the sharpness with which the knowledge of death comes,
characterize not alone this group, but all the songs. He is throughout
them the child who sees the beetle lie dead, and who expresses his
wonder and trouble directly from his heart with all the sharpness of
necessary speech. So much other music seems indirect, hesitating,
timorous, beside these little forms of granite.
And then, Moussorgsky's operas, "Boris" in particular, are dramatically
swifter than most of Wagner's. He never made the mistake the master of
Bayreuth so frequently made, of subordinating the drama to the music,
and arresting the action for the sake of a "Waldweben" or a
"Charfreitagszauber.
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