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Musical Portrayals Of Death In Mussorgsky’S Songs And Dances Of Death, Graham Michael Anduri

Dissertations

Musorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death presents a set of unique portrayals of death in art song literature. Aside from the obvious challenge of the Russian language and Cyrillic alphabet which are unfamiliar to most Western performers, the unique musical style, historical context, and complex psychological implications of Songs and Dances of Death require a good deal of study before one can fully grasp the profundity and importance of this cycle.

Musorgsky’s views on music and life, the Zeitgeist in which these songs were composed, a historical analysis of the medieval Dance of Death tradition and its influence on the …