Mussorgsky Art Song Divertimento "death Dance" Study

Mussorgsky is a prominent Russian composer in 19th Century. As one of the most radical members in the Russian Five, he devoted to creation of music characterized with Russian nation property. He is also the founder of modern musical realism in Russia. His works tries to uncover the dark side of Russian society of his times, which reflects people's suffering from critical reality. On the style of his works, it is not difficult to find out the characteristics and uniqueness of Russian nation, which is can be demonstrated on bold creativity of language and form of his music as well.Mussorgsky's creation of artistic songs takes a large proportion of his entire works, which possesses great artistic values. The author will make an analysis and comparison on those artistic songs and try to find out the creation features of them. The dissertation is composed of four parts.In chapter one, it will make a general discussion about the development status of Russian artistic songs in 19th Century. In the beginning, it will introduce the socio-cultural background information of Russia in 19th Century. Then, it will make a description of different music groups. In the end, it will discuss how Russian artistic songs came into being. In this chapter, the article tries to give readers a general impression of Mussorgsky creation background.Chapter two will lay emphasis on the composer's life and creation experience, which will help reader know more about Mussorgsky. It will also analyze the style of his works and creation background of Songs and Dances of Death.In chapter three, the author will analyze the creation techniques of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death (Lullaby, Serenade, Trepak, the Field-Marshal), which includes the developing forms of rhythm, harmony and music forms. In chapter four, the author will discuss the esthetics rules and creation motivation of Mussorgsky's artistic songs and point out creation rules of his artistic songs. In the conclusion chapter, there will be a sum up on the creation characteristics of Songs and Dances of Death and make a further discussion about its influence on songs composing in 20th Century for western composers.The dissertation will focus on the creation analysis of songs and combine the research on musicology, sociology, history and esthetics. It will lay emphasis on the deep research of his representative artistic songs, through which we can get the creation characteristics. It will give people more chances to make further research on Mussorgsky's creation.