Fortunate Years for Unfortunate Composer [Musorgsky] 4/11/31

Fifty years ago-to be exact, on March 28, 1881, at five o’clock in the morning-ended the life of Modest Petrovich Musorgsky. He died on his forty-second birthday, a rare distinction, cause for conjecture for numerically minded mystics. If, however, as the latest Russian investigators indicate, Musorgsky saw light on March 9, 1839 (all according to the Gregorian calendar), his horoscope will lose much of its grim symmetry, while preserving the aspect of fatefulness. Of the effects found in the hospital room where Musorgsky died, there were several books, among them Berlioz’s Treatise on Instrumentation. What a sad commentary this posthumous textbook furnished to Musorgsky’s dearest detractors, whose pet theory was to represent the man as a misdirected genius sorrowfully lacking in discipline, flaunting his technical inefficiency as unconventionality of design, scorning study because of inability to concentrate and retain! Even Glinka’s sister, Shestakova, Musorgsky’s true friend and confidante, could find no other words, upon learning of his death, than the resigned observation that Musorgsky had no future to live for. And Rimsky-Korsakov fixed the undetermined cause of Musorgsky’s last illness as delirium tremens, with the inevitable inference of long years of alcoholic over-indulgence-and this in the face of medical facts that refuted any such arbitrary diagnosis.