These pieces are the children of an infinitely noble mind. There is
something in those gorgeous melodies, those magnificent cries, those
proud and solemn themes of which both "Boris" and "Khovanchtchina" are
full, that makes Wagner seem plebeian and bourgeois. Peasant-like though
the music is, reeking of the soil, rude and powerful, it still seems to
refer to a mind of a prouder, finer sort than that of the other man. The
reticence, the directness, the innocence of any theatricality, the
avoidance of all that is purely effective, the dignity of expression,
the salt and irony, the round, full ring of every detail are good and
fortifying after the scoriac inundations of Wagner's genius. The gaunt
gray piles, the metallic surfaces, the homelinesses of Moussorgsky, are
more virile, stronger, more resisting than Wagner's music. Only folk
aristocratically sure of themselves can be as gay and light at will. If
there is anything in modern music to be compared with the sheer, blunt,
powerful volumes of primitive art it is the work of Moussorgsky. And as
the years pass, the man's stature and mind become more immense, more
prodigious. One has but to hearken to the accent of the greater part of
modern music to gauge in whose shadow we are all living, how far the
impulse coming from him has carried.
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