MUSIC

AND LETTERS
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unforgettable " inn on the Lithuanian border ". (The En may need to be reminded that in the early seventeenth
centu was not a tiny Baltic state but a great dukedom united common crown and stretching from the Baltic
nearly to Kiev.) In the second version of his opera Mussorgsky Hostess's song about the duck and the
business of the guests, but the original version began exactly as in Push entrance of Grigory and the monks,
and the hostess's w refreshment will you take, reverend fathers ? " (p. 87). A cell scene, Mussorgsky has kept
pretty faithfully to his auth inevitable cuts, Varlaam's first remark in the play is di him and Misail in the opera,
there are all sorts of appar vated verbal changes; but on the whole, one can say that like the one in Pimen's
cell, is mainly Pushkin and preserv part of Pushkin. Even Varlaam's song about the takin prescribed in the
poet's stage-directions.

The scene of Boris and his children in the terem, whic banqueting scene in Shuysky's house (wisely passed
over despite the light it throws on the character of the crafty Sh so easily measured against the Pushkin text. To
begin w two widely different versions to compare with Pushkin original of I869 and the version drastically
rewritten in turn was altered and cut before publication of the vocal On the whole the I869 version keeps a
good deal closer to that of I871, though in one or two details the later vers more faithful. For instance Xenia, in
her first speech, speaks bridegroom lying " in a dark grave, in a strange land ". I version Mussorgsky set the
greater part of this little sp Pushkin wrote it, altering only the two adjectives " dark and " strange " to " far-
off ". In the later version Musso all but four of Pushkin's words, yet one of these four i epithet " strange ".
Another tiny phrase from this first spee was transferred, in a slightly altered form, to another pa farther on in
the I871 version. Indeed even in the I869 ve text is treated with the utmost freedom and the action, too, altered; in
the 1871 version the action is still further al insertion of the nurse's " gnat " song, the clapping gam incident
and so on. The differences are most clearly sho form:

Pushkin Mussorgsky (i869) Mussorgsky (1871) Xenia's lament. Xenia's lament, with the Xenia's lament, with the
Tsarevich's map-reading. episodes of the chiming

clock, the " gnat" song and

the clapping game.

Enter Boris, who addresses Enter Boris, who addresses Enter Boris, who addresses Xenia. Xenia and dismisses her and
Xenia and dismisses her and

the nurse. the nurse.

The geography lesson. The geography lesson. The geography lesson.

Boris's monologue, " I stand Boris's monologue (incor- supreme in power " (based porating only about eight almost entirely
on the text of lines' of the Pushkin text) his monologue in Pushkin's noise behind the scenes. seventh scene).

Scene with Semyon Godu- Scene with a boyar. Scene with a boyar. The nov ; Boris dismisses Xenia
Tsarevich's account of the

and the nurse. parrot.

Scene with Shuysky. Sc Boris alone. Boris alone. Boris alone.

Hallucination scene, with the clock.