Boris Godunov

Musorgskij’s music was slow to be recognized outside of Russia for its masterly and forward-looking qualities. To this day his compositions are heard largely in arrangements; many are still quite unknown and unavailable in practical editions.

The new edition of the Collected Works of Modest P. Musorgskij in 34 volumes will contain all of the composer‘s finished works as well as those remaining as fragments (some published for the first time) together with collected drafts, sketches and other documentary musical and textual material relevant to Musorgskij‘s output.

It is the aim of this edition to reproduce the compositions in their original form, thereby freeing them from the revisions – in which individual sections were deliberately re-arranged and newly linked to one another, or in which changes were made to the musical substance – undertaken by others.

The complete edition will be divided into two series: first, Vol. 1–17 will contain the original works; next, Vol. 18 and 19 will present facsimi-les of the autograph scores of St John‘s Night on the Bare Mountain and Pictures at an Exhibition; Vol. 20/21, the collected writings; and Vol. 23–34, revisions and newly orchestrated versions by Rimskij-Korsakov, Ippolitov-Ivanov, ©ostakovic¢ and others, representing an independent tradition of performance practice.

All volumes will be prepared to the standards permitted by contemporary scholarly editorial techniques and will contain prefaces and comprehensive editorial notes in Russian and English. To assist with performances in the original language, an international transliteration (ISO) of sung texts will appear beneath the Cyrillic script; a literal English translation will be provided in an appendix.