Mussorgsky: Keyboard Works

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Explore the complete catalog of Keyboard compositions by Mussorgsky. This curated list includes composition years, historical Wikipedia context, and interactive audio to add specific tracks directly to your listening queue.

Title Year Actions
A Tear

The following is a list of compositions by Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky.

Albumleaf: Meditation

Album leaf is the title of numerous minor compositions by a wide variety of classical composers. It also appears in the French version, Feuille d'album or Feuillet d'album; the German version Albumblatt (pl. Albumblätter); the Russian version Листок из альбома (pl. Листки из альбома); the Spanish and Latin-American versions Hoja de álbum; and other languages. Many of these pieces are for piano solo, but the title has also been used for other instrumental pieces in the salon music genre, and for vocal pieces. They tend to be short, pleasant, and not particularly demanding on the performer. There is no standard form or structure; the title Album leaf is quite arbitrary, and these pieces could just as easily have been called Prelude, Impromptu, Romance, Humoresque or other names. Originally, the term "Album leaf" was used for pieces written in dedication to a friend or admirer, to be inserted into their album or autograph book, and not intended for publication. It later lost any association with a particular dedicatee.

Childhood Memories

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (; Russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский, romanized: Modest Petrovich Musorgsky; IPA: [mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj] ; 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five." He was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period and strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. Many of Mussorgsky's works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. For many years, Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers. Many of his most important compositions have posthumously come into their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also available. At the State Institute for Art Studies in Moscow, M. P. Musorgsky's Complete Works: Academic Edition is being published. As of 2026, six volumes have been issued, including the opera Boris Godunov: two volumes of the vocal score (2020) and four volumes of the full score (2025). The vocal score was prepared by Nadezhda Teterina and Evgeny Levashev (1944–2022). The full score was prepared by Evgeny Levashev, Nadezhda Teterina, and Roman Berchenko.

Duma on a theme of V. A. Loginov, for piano
Impromptu passionné

Vadim Vasilyevich Borisovsky (Russian: Вадим Васильевич Борисовский; 20 January 1900 – 2 July 1972) was a Soviet-Russian violist.

In the Village, quasi fantasia

The following is a list of compositions by Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky.

Intermezzo in modo classico

An intermezzo is a musical composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or opera, or movements of a larger musical work. Intermezzo may also refer to:

Jeux d'enfants-les quatre coins, for piano
Meditation, 'Razdumye', for piano
On the Southern Shore of the Crimea

The following is a list of compositions by Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Pictures at an Exhibition is a piano suite in ten movements, plus a recurring and varied Promenade theme, written in 1874, by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. It is a musical depiction of a tour of an exhibition of works by architect and painter Viktor Hartmann put on at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, following his sudden death in the previous year. Each movement of the suite is based on an individual work, some of which are lost. The composition has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists, and became widely known from orchestrations and arrangements produced by other composers and contemporary musicians, with Maurice Ravel's 1922 adaptation for orchestra being the most recorded and performed. The suite, particularly the final movement, "The Bogatyr Gates", is widely considered one of Mussorgsky's greatest works.

Porte-enseigne Polka

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (; Russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский, romanized: Modest Petrovich Musorgsky; IPA: [mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj] ; 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five." He was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period and strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. Many of Mussorgsky's works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. For many years, Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers. Many of his most important compositions have posthumously come into their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also available. At the State Institute for Art Studies in Moscow, M. P. Musorgsky's Complete Works: Academic Edition is being published. As of 2026, six volumes have been issued, including the opera Boris Godunov: two volumes of the vocal score (2020) and four volumes of the full score (2025). The vocal score was prepared by Nadezhda Teterina and Evgeny Levashev (1944–2022). The full score was prepared by Evgeny Levashev, Nadezhda Teterina, and Roman Berchenko.

Rêverie
Scherzo in B flat major

Major/minor compositions are musical compositions that begin in a major key and end in a minor key (generally the parallel minor), specifying the keynote (as C major/minor). This is a very unusual form in tonal music, although examples became more common in the nineteenth century. There are far fewer major/minor compositions than minor/major ones (the latter category of which includes, but is not limited to, all minor-key works that end with a Picardy third, as well as many Classical- and Romantic-period symphonies, concertos, sonatas and chamber works, and individual movements thereof.) The major/minor compositions in the following lists do not necessarily end with a minor chord; a final passage in minor ending with a sonority that fails to re-establish the major mode (for example, an open octave or fifth) is sufficient. Works falling into the following categories are excluded: Compositions that would be major/minor but for a final Picardy third stipulated by the composer, such as Bach's Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes, BWV 40, Francis Poulenc's Vinea mea electa from Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence (FP 97), or Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Sextet, Op. 110; Compositions that would be major/minor, but end inconclusively on the major dominant of the final minor key, e.g. Nos. 2 and 9 of Robert Schumann's Kerner cycle, Op. 35, or Schumann's Die Nonne, Op. 49 No. 3; Compositions in which the beginning only hints at a possible reading of a major key without really establishing it, such as the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, Haydn's two string quartets, Op. 33 No. 1 and Op. 64 No. 2, C. P. E. Bach's Piano Sonata, Wq. 55/3, or the first movement of Alkan's Grande sonate 'Les quatre âges' (all of which are in B minor, but start with the possibility of D major); Compositions in which the opening major chord merely serves a function (e.g. dominant or Neapolitan) in the ensuing minor key, without being tonicized in its own right, such as Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre or Chopin's first Ballade; Compositions that are only incidentally major/minor due to being unfinished, without any indication that the composer intended them to be major/minor, such as Schubert's Piano Sonata in C, D. 840 or Haydn's String Quartet in D minor, Op. 103; Frequently performed portions of a larger work consisting of what is technically two separate movements, if the first of these finishes clearly on the tonic (and thus doesn't require continuation), such as the opening pair of movements in Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 109 (connected by an attacca); Entire extended works as song cycles, ballets, operas and oratorios that finish in a different tonic than the starting one, unless the two keys carry clear extramusical or programmatic connotions within the work (an explanation of which must accompany any such listings below).

Scherzo in C sharp minor, for piano

Sergei Prokofiev set to work on his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16, in 1912 and completed it the next year. However, that version of the concerto is lost; the score was destroyed in a fire following the Russian Revolution. Prokofiev reconstructed the work in 1923, two years after finishing his Piano Concerto No. 3, and declared it to be "so completely rewritten that it might almost be considered [Piano Concerto] No. 4." Indeed, its orchestration has features that clearly postdate the 1921 concerto. Performing as soloist, Prokofiev premiered this "No. 2" in Paris on 8 May 1924 with Serge Koussevitzky conducting. It is dedicated to the memory of Maximilian Schmidthof, a friend of Prokofiev's at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, who had committed suicide in April 1913 after having written a farewell letter to Prokofiev.

Shveya, for piano
Sonata in C major, for piano 4-hands

G major is a major scale based on G, with the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F♯. Its key signature has one sharp. Its relative minor is E minor and its parallel minor is G minor. The G major scale is: Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with accidentals as necessary. The G harmonic major and melodic major scales are:

Souvenir d'enfance

The following is a list of compositions by Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky.

The Seamstress

The following is a list of compositions by Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky.

Une larme, for piano

The following is a list of compositions by Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky.