ABSTRACT
‘Catacombs’, the eighth of the Pictures from an Exhibition, is also the strangest. At a mere thirty bars, it is shorter than any of the other numbered pieces in the suite. It is unique among Modeste Musorgsky’s non-vocal works in being athematic: a chant-like inner part, its notes stemmed upwards in the composer’s characteristically scrupulous fashion, seems to promise thematic development, but nothing comes of it, and the burgeoning melodic interest in bars 17–22 peters out at the cadence. Musoryanin has finally finished and written the last bit of his piece on Hartman. At first Musoryanin has a depiction of a gloomy cavern. Then, above a tremolo in minor, comes the first promenade theme; this is the glimmering of little lights in the skulls; here, suddenly, Hartman’s enchanting, poetic appeal to Musorgsky rings out.
