Modeste Petrovich Musorgsky, best known for the opera entitled Borus Godunov, was born in Karevo, on March 21st, 1839. His mother gave him piano lessons, but folk songs he heard as a child inspired him to improvise before the lessons even started. During his schooling in St. Petersburg, Musorgsky also studied piano with Anton Herke, developing his performing and improvising skills. At nine years old, he played a field concerto in front of an audience in his parents' house. He entered the Guards' cadet school in St Petersburg in 1852. Musorgsky had not studied harmony or composition, but tried to write an opera in 1856 when he joined the Guards.
In 1857, Modeste Musorgsky met Balakirev, and persuaded him to give him lessons and composed songs, as well as piano sonalas. In the following year, he resigned his army commission because of a nervous or spiritual crisis he was experiencing. After another year, his music began to enjoy numerous public performances, but his nervous irritability was not completely comforted.
In 1859, Musorgsky was obliged to spend most of the following two years helping his family in the management of their estate, because of the emancipation, or freeing, of the serfs in March of that year. In 1863-66, Musorgsky served at the Ministry of Communications and continued to compose, working on the music of an opera, Salammbo, which was never completed. At the Ministry of Communications, Musorgsky lived with five other young men who exchanged and cultivated advanced ideas of religion, politics, philosophy and art.
Musorgsky's mother died in 1865, and he underwent his first serious spell of dipsomania not only because of her death, but also because his private and public lives eventually came into conflict. He was dismissed from his post in 1867.
That summer, Musorgsky lived at his brother's country house at Minkino where he wrote his first important orchestral work, St.
