Khovanshchina: Prelude (Dawn on the Moscow River)

Pronunciation

• Khovanshchina (The Khovansky Affair) is a historical opera depicting Peter the Great’s tumultuous ascent to the throne.¹ Mussorgsky called it a “National Music Drama.”²
  • Mussorgsky began sketching out the work during celebrations for Peter the Great’s bicentennial.³
  • Mussorgsky’s notebook of material for Khovanshchina was incredibly well-researched: it included quotations from eyewitness accounts and other primary source material.⁴
• Mussorgsky worked on this opera from 1872 onward, but he never completed it. Rimsky-Korsakov completed Khovanshchina after Mussorgsky’s death.⁵
  • Ravel and Stravinsky did further revisions and reconstructions to the work when Diaghilev produced it in Paris in 1913. Dmitri Shostakovich made another reconstruction for a production in the Soviet Union in 1960.
• This movement: was composed in September of 1874.⁶
• This movement is structured around a Russian folk tune with five variations upon that tune. Creating modifications to each verse in a folk tune is a typical Russian folk singing style.⁷

1. Robert W. Oldani, “Musorgsky [Mussorgsky; Moussorgsky], Modest Petrovich,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed November 19, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000019468. 
2.  Richard Taruskin, “Khovanshchina,” Grove Music Online. (2002), accessed December 3, 2019,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000004113. 
3. Ibid.
4.  Oldani, “Musorgsky [Mussorgsky; Moussorgsky], Modest Petrovich,” Grove Music Online.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7.  Richard Freed, “Prelude to Khovanstchina (‘Dawn on the Moskva River’),” The Kennedy Center, accessed December 3, 2019, https://www.kennedy-center.org/artist/composition/4059.