Modest Mussorgsky was the most original and influential of the 19th century Russian nationalist composers.

Mussorgsky was born on March 21, 1839 in Karevo, Russia. He was educated privately and at a military academy in St. Petersburg. In 1952 he entered the School for Cadets of the Guard and composed his first musical works.

During the winter of 1856, a regimental comrade introduced Mussorgsky to the Russian nationalist composer Mikhail Glinka, and this inspired his own nationalistic spirit. Upon visiting the Kremlin he was to say, To bring the past into the present - that is my task! In 1858 he resigned from military service to devote himself to music; after 1863 he supported himself as a government clerk. Musically, Mussorgsky was self-taught. His songs, among the finest of the 19th century, reflect his desire to reproduce the rhythms of Russian speech. So also does his masterpiece, the opera Boris Godunov (1868).