Scribe Scene with Men’s Chorus Lament for Mother Russia
Kuzka’s Gossip Song with Chorus
Critical edition, reconstruction and translation by Elia Andrea Corazza
I am happy to announce the publication of my edition of the Orchestrations by Maurice Ravel of Khovanshchina by Modest Mussorgsky.
Maurice Ravel worked on the two orchestrations in 1913, together with Igor Stravinsky.
The first piece orchestrated by Ravel is the Scribe Scene with Men’s Chorus “Lament for Mother Russia”. It is placed in the first act between the second and the third scenes. It features the Scribe (tenor) and the Chorus of the Strangers from outside Moscow, a male chorus with tenor and basses divisi. The scene depicts the Chorus singing the “gossip song” and then convincing the Scribe to read the Tsar’s dreadful edict inscribed on the column. The scene culminates with the poignant “a cappella” chorus “Oh, ty ròdnaja matuška Rus’” (“Oh, you dear Mother Russia”), accompanied by an evocative offstage trumpet. Rooted on a Russian traditional folk tune, this choir is particularly intense and moving.
The second orchestration is Kuzka’s “Gossip Song” with Chorus, from the third act. Kuzka (tenor) is a Streltsy, an imperial guard. He sings the “gossip song” accompanying himself with a balalaika in a hilarious dialogue with the chorus of the other Streltsy and their wives. In both excerpts, a close connection to folk melodies emerges – a defining feature of Mussorgsky’s compositional style – along with an initial playful and captivating popular quality represented by the quotations of the gossip songs. These two features, both witty and dramatic, probably attracted the attention of Serge Diaghilev while deciding to incorporate them in his 1913 staging of the opera.
Serge Diaghilev, the legendary impresario of the Ballets Russes, wanted to stage Khovanshchina in Paris in the 1913 season, but he was not completely satisfied with Rimsky-Korsakov version. Having had access to Mussorsky’s original piano version, Diaghilev wanted to restore some passages omitted from the orchestral version by Rimsky-Korsakov, and, at the beginning of 1913, entrusted with this task Igor Stravinsky. At that time, however, Stravinsky was busy working on the recently commissioned Rite of Spring. The two Russians then decided to ask Maurice Ravel, who had previously completed the ballet Daphnis et Chloé for the Ballets Russes, to work on the orchestrations in close collaboration with Stravinsky. To prepare the scores, Ravel joined Stravinsky in Clarens, Switzerland, during the months of March and April of 1913.
This was an intense period for the Ballets Russes and indeed a defining time for the history of music itself. The premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring took place at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913; only a week later, on the 5th of June, Diaghilev’s production of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina was premiered at the same theatre.
While Stravinsky’s contributions to this opera have long been known, performed and recorded on numerous occasions, Ravel’s orchestrations have not been available in a critical edition, until now. At the time of this first publication (August 2026), moreover, we are not aware of any modern performances of the orchestrations by Maurice Ravel, which were performed probably only during the first production staged by Diaghilev in 1913.
While presenting all the melodic lines, Ravel manuscript was lacking the text of the vocal part to be sung. Thus I have reconstructed the libretto on Mussorgsky’s original texts, in cyrillic, then I have provided the transliteration for Western reading interpreters, and finally I have provided an Italian metrical translation, to foster performances for Italian speaking audiences.
The two numbers are therefore published here for the first time because of their unquestionable musical and musicological interest, both within the ongoing process of the discovery and rediscovery of Mussorgsky’s work and with the hope that these scores will become part of the future performing tradition. They give a direct insight of the process of rediscovery and restoration happening the beginning of the Twentieth-century. These scores bear witness to the beauty of the orchestrations created by Ravel in 1913, at a time when the French composer had already reached his full artistic maturity and total command of his expressive means, while still to be internationally recognized as the legendary orchestrator that we know nowadays.
The work on Khovanshchina represented for Ravel both a first act of exploration and a creative challenge with Mussorgsky’s piano materials. The remarkable beauty of these orchestrations prophetically foreshadows, in a visionary way, the now-famous orchestral version that Ravel himself would create nine years later, in 1922, on the original piano music by Mussorgsky of the Pictures at an Exhibition.
Listen to the music here below:
Scribe Scene with Men’s Chorus Lament for Mother Russia
Kuzka’s Gossip Song with Chorus
Score and parts:
https://www.universaledition.com/Werke/Chowanschtschina/P0367451
or send me an email: elia at eliacorazza dot it
Keywords: Khovanshchina, Хованщина, Chovanščina, Chowanschtschina, Khovanchtchina, Chovanščina, Modest Petrovič Musorgskij, Modest Petrowitsch Mussorgski, Модест Петрович Мусоргский, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, Maurice Ravel, Ravel, Elia Andrea Corazza, Diaghilev, Djagilev, Ballets Russes
