Mussorgsky “Pictures at an Exhibition” Follow-On Learning Bundle

You may purchase this resource individually here.

 2 items:

• Student Activity Booklet (16 pages)
• Answers, Notes and Observations (18 pages) 

The step-by-step approach in the Activity Booklet will lead your students through a detailed analysis of the second piece in Pictures (“Gnome”)  starting with an understanding of the overall structure via the way Mussorgsky handles theme and key. Following on, a series of activities that explore how the different elements of music (melody, rhythm, texture and harmony) relate to the extra-musical idea behind this piece. 

Pgs.1-2 of the Student Activity Booklet contain further details of the aims and objectives that may be useful if producing a lesson plan. These two pages are essentially a “missive” about how they might approach this activity to get the most from it. If you don’t feel this appropriate for your students you can always amend/delete.  (This resource is editable.)

Two features of this resource that I would like to draw attention to with respect to skills development are:

1. In terms of self-study how we develop the ability to work with/take something from a text that may initially seem too difficult to really engage with. We take several passages from the Mussorgsky scholar’s book  “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Michel Russ and through stepped activities that encourage your students to engage with challenging concepts we explore what Russ is telling us about the music.
2. Throughout there is a focus on how we translate what we understand into writing about music with an emphasis on vocabulary (both specialist and otherwise). Students are encouraged in several places to write a short passage such that they would include in an essay. 

You may purchase this resource individually here.

2 items:

1. Student Booklet (10 pages)
2. Answers, Notes and Observations (5 pages). 

While the way in which the memorable “Promenade” sections create a degree of structural unity as they reappear amongst the otherwise disparate collection of pictures, they also function programmatically. It is through these sections that we observe Mussorgsky’s journey through the exhibition.

The activities and information in the Student Booklet will encourage your students to listen to, think about and then write about how the elements of music come together to evoke Mussorgsky’s physical as well as emotional journey through the exhibition.

The Answers, Notes and Observations are designed in such a way, so that if your students are self-marking, they will have to read exemplar commentaries in order to find the answers to the questions posed in the Student Booklet.

You may purchase this resource individually here.

2 items:

1. Student Booklet (8 pages)
2. Answers, Notes and Observations (8 pages)

Students often struggle with the concepts of harmony and tonality. This booklet contains “user-friendly” explanations of basic concepts, such as how we define what is a “close” and “distant” tonal relationship, with activities that exemplify this concept at work in Pictures. Through a variety of activities your students will gain a sound grasp of the way in which tonal relationships function from both a structural and programmatic perspective in Pictures.

Pictures is episodic in effect not only because of the interesting choice and arrangement of keys that we explore in the first part of the booklet. We also encounter a wide variety of harmonic styles within this one work. In the second part of the booklet we explore a few important harmonic concepts. We consider, for example, how harmony (the way in which a composer uses chords)  defines key. Against this backdrop we move on to consider how cadential closure, diatonicism vs. chromaticism and the way in which Mussorgsky handles modulation all have a role to play in relation to the programme. 

You may purchase this resource individually here.

2 items:

1. Activity Booklet (12 pages)
2. Answers, Notes and Observations (11 pages)

If your students have completed the 4 activities in the Introductory Learning Bundle as well as the 3 worksheets prior to this in the Follow-On Learning Bundle they will have gained some useful background and context, an overview of the entire work, a sound grasp of how aspects of musical language function in relation to the programme as well as detailed knowledge of certain key sections.  Throughout, they will also have practiced writing short commentaries on the music of Pictures.

Now for the full essay! This, however, is where some students really struggle! 

With this in mind, the Essay Booklet starts with a specimen introduction. What follows is a series of engaging (I hesitate to say the word “fun”) activities that take the specimen introduction as a starting point and will make your students think about the process of essay writing whilst fulfilling the requirements of a top-grade essay in terms of the exam-board marking criteria.   What are “evaluative and critical” judgements? Where and how do we demonstrate “knowledge and understanding” of “background” and “context” and how do we choose “relevant examples” and show “close familiarity” with those examples? And last bit not least, how do we weave all of this information into a “coherent”, logical and “sustained line of reasoning”. These are just some of the criteria that are addressed in the activities.

In order to complete this final activity your students will have to engage with both the music of Pictures as well as the requirements of the mark scheme the mark scheme at a deep level. When they stop and think in this way, all sorts starts to “stick”! Specialist terminology, useful vocabulary and effective phraseology as well as ideas and opinions about the music that will stay with them.  

Pictures at an Exhibition wasn’t actually published while Mussorgsky was still alive. On Mussorgky’s death Rimsky Korsakov was asked to “edit” Mussorgsky’s scores and, as Michael Russ the Mussorgsky scholar states, “thus began one of the major controversies in musical history” (p.22)*. 

Bearing this in mind, what struck me quite forcefully as I started to work on Pictures was the noticeable differences between the editions. It has been rather a balancing act to recommend an appropriate edition based on both availability and accuracy.  Ideally one would use an Urtext edition, but the three most recent Urtext editions, as detailed below, are all too recent to appear on IMSLP. 

• The Peter’s Edition (ed. Hellmundt, which I believe was produced in 1975).
• The Wiener Urtext Edition (ed. Schandert and Ashkenazy, pub. 1984)
• The Bäreneiter Urtext (ed.Christoph Flamm, pub. 2013 and updated as recently as 2020)

So, with half an eye to cost and availability to students see the list of five editions given below which are to be found on IMSLP.  For reference, the one I have given links to in the resources is No.5 on the list below. I have chosen this score for the following reasons:   

• The clarity and simplicity of the score itself. (Some of the scores have fingering added which is I feel is an unnecessary detail, bearing in mind how cluttered  student scores can becomes they study a piece.)  
• It is the most user-friendly in terms of student use. (Titles, for example, are given in English.) 
• This edition is faithful to Mussorgsky’s practice of NOT using key signatures in Promenades 2-4. 

This said, unfortunately this edition contains neither page nor bar numbers. None of the editions includes bar numbers. I have given a bit more detail about each of the editions below in case you would prefer to use one other than that which I have used. 

 Editions on IMSLP: 

1. The first edition (ed. Rimsky-Korsakov). Titles are not translated though it does have page numbers. Didn’t feel that the layout was as clear and simple as No.5. 
2. Augener edition (ed. Thümer). As it states on the score, it has been “Revised, phrased and fingered O. Thümer”.  Described by Russ as “the most accurate of the early editions” (p.24). I discounted this edition because the fingering, which is quite extensive in places and can make the score feel a bit cluttered.  Does have page numbers.  
3. The Schirmer Edition (ed Bauer)– omits the 5th Promenade, puts in the key signatures in Promenades 2-4 and according to Russ (p.28) “freely” translates the titles of the pieces. 
4. The Kalmus edition, from the Complete Collected Works (ed. Lamm). Titles not in English and the typeface not as user-friendly as No.5 
5. Same as above but reprinted by Dover in 1990. (The scan by Guifré).

Ideally, students should have their own “hard copy” of the score, (to which page and bar numbers can be added) especially if this is one of the works you have chosen to study in detail.  

*Russ, Michael. ‘Musorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition’ Cambridge Music Handbooks (Cambridge, 1992).