Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: ??????? ????????? ???????????) (March 21, 1839 – March 28, 1881; sometimes spelled Modeste Moussorgsky), was an innovative Russian composer famed for his colourful, exotic, and lush orchestral pieces dedicated to various subjects of medieval Russian history. His major works include the great national opera, Boris Godunov, and the piano suite called Pictures at an Exhibition.

Appearances in film and popular culture

Mussorgsky's flair for highly direct and memorable gestures has made his music popular with film and TV producers: the following examples could be multiplied many times over.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940) famously incorporates A Night on the Bare Mountain (in a form that is Leopold Stokowski's heavily redacted version of Rimsky-Korsakov's revision).
• Extracts from Pictures at an Exhibition and A Night on the Bare Mountain appear in the music score for the 1972 film Asylum (where the composer credit is to Douglas Gamley).
• Part of 'The Hut on Fowl's Legs' from Pictures at an Exhibition (Ravel's orchestration) was used for the theme music of the BBC's 1977 WWII documentary series The Secret War.
• 'The Hut on Fowl's Legs' and 'The Great Gate of Kiev' in orchestrated form were also appropriated in Terry Gilliam's 1977 film Jabberwocky.
• An adaptation of A Night on the Bare Mountain appears in Saturday Night Fever (1977).
• In 1980, Woody Allen's 'Stardust Memories' used an extract from the opening of A Night on the Bare Mountain for a comic sequence where a character's 'anger' has escaped and run amok.
• The UK's political satire sit-com The New Statesman (1987-92), which starred Rik Mayall, used the opening 'Promenade' from Pictures at an Exhibition as its theme-tune.
• The song-cycle Sunless lends its title to the 1982 film Sans Soleil by Chris Marker; the significance of the reference is not readily apparent, but the connection is acknowledged explicitly by Marker towards the end of the film.