Q.1.
As with many great composers, Mussorgsky had a young start with his music. What was his first significant help with this?
Q.2.
Which of these is the most accurate summary of Mussorgsky's early musical milestones?
Q.3.
In which Russian city did he go away to school during his teenage years?
Q.4.
At the age of 17, Mussorgsky was working in a military hospital where he met a colleague just 5 years his senior: this other man, though working as a chemist and surgeon, was to become a friend and fellow-composer in a group known as 'the Five'. Who was he?
Q.5.
Mussorgsky, too, while writing and playing plenty of music, needed a 'day job'. What was his main career?
Q.6.
Many great composers have had to struggle with personal difficulties, no different from 'ordinary folk'; what was Mussorgsky's particular problem?
Q.7.
Another of Mussorgsky's best-loved works is a suite of piano pieces called , written in response to a memorial show of paintings by Hartmann, an architect friend who had recently died. (The pictures since seem to have been dis-united and lost track of: it would be interesting to see them again!) Mussorgsky's original version was for piano solo, but the set has become even more widely known in an orchestral version by which French composer?
Q.8.
Mussorgsky also wrote an opera based on the life of a Russian hero: which one?
Q.9.
While there are a gravestone and memorials elsewhere, the patch of land where Mussorgsky's remains are buried was redeveloped in the Soviet era. What stands there now?
Q.10.
In which year had Mussorgsky finished composing ?