Modest Mussorgsky - Name

Name

The spelling and pronunciation of the composer's name has been a matter of some controversy.

The family name is derived from a 15th or 16th century ancestor, Roman Vasilyevich Monastïryov, who was mentioned in the Velvet Book, the 17th century genealogy of Russian boyars. Roman Vasilyevich bore the nickname "Musorga", and was the grandfather of the first 'Mussorgsky'. The composer is of the lineage of Ryurik, the legendary founder of the Russian state.

In Mussorgsky family documents, the spelling of the name varies: 'Musarsky', 'Musersky', 'Muserskoy', 'Musirskoy', 'Musorsky', and 'Musursky'. According to his baptismal record the composer's name is 'Musersky'.

In early (up to 1858) letters to Miliy Balakirev, the composer signed his name 'Musorsky' (Russian: Мусoрский, Musorskiy). The 'g' made its first appearance in a letter to Balakirev in 1863. Mussorgsky used this new spelling (Russian: Мусoргский, Musorgskiy) to the end of his life, but occasionally reverted to the earlier 'Musorsky'. The addition of the 'g' to the name was likely initiated by the composer's elder brother Filaret to obscure the resemblance of the name's root to an unsavory Russian word:

мýсoр (músor) — n. m. debris, rubbish, refuse

Mussorgsky apparently did not take the new spelling seriously, and played on the 'rubbish' connection in letters to Vladimir Stasov and Stasov's family, routinely signing his name 'Musoryanin', or 'garbage-dweller' (cf. dvoryanin: 'nobleman').

The first syllable of the name originally received the stress (i.e. 'MÚS-ər-ski'), and does so to this day in Russia and in the composer's home district. The mutability of the second-syllable vowel in the versions of the name recorded by the family documents mentioned above is evidence that this syllable did not receive the stress.

The addition of the 'g' and the accompanying shift in stress to the second syllable (i.e. 'Mu-SÓRK-ski'), sometimes described as a Polish variant, was supported by Filaret Mussorgsky's descendants until his line was extinguished in the 20th century. Their example was followed by many influential Russians, such as Fyodor Shalyapin, Nikolay Golovanov, and Tikhon Khrennikov, who, perhaps dismayed that the great composer's name was "reminiscent of garbage", supported the erroneous second-syllable stress that has also become entrenched in the West.

The Western convention of doubling the first 's', which is not observed in scholarly literature (e.g. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians), likely arose because in many Western European languages a single intervocalic 's' often becomes voiced to 'z' (e.g. 'music'), unlike Slavic languages where it remains unvoiced.