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22 RACHMANINOFF // MUSSORGSKY Modest Mussorgsky and Pictures at an Exhibition Modest Mussorgsky was born in Tsarist Russia in 1839. Together with his friends of the ‘Mighty Handful’, Balakirev, Borodin, Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov, he endeavoured to create a Russian national music inspired by folklore. Suffering from a cruel lack of recognition and significant financial problems, Mussorgsky took refuge in alcohol. With the encouragement of Rimsky-Korsakov, he composed his famous symphonic poem A Night on the Bare Mountain in 1867. Two years later, he wrote an initial version of his opera Boris Godunov that found little favour with the critics. In 1872 he was finally successful thanks to a revised Boris better suited to public taste. But he was eventually undermined by alcoholism and material difficulties, and died in 1881 in a state of utter destitution, two months after Dostoevsky whom he passionately admired. He left several operas unfinished, including Khovanshchina , which was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and later revised by Shostakovich and Stravinsky.