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A Musical Analogy for Antiquity, Development, and Deviation

Tradition and Sanity

Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881) composed Pictures at an Exhibition in 1874 as a lengthy virtuoso work for solo piano. Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) made a grand and glittering 1922 orchestration of it. In 1971, a British progressive rock band, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, made a rock arrangement of Pictures at an Exhibition. I argue that the original piano version is like the early Christian liturgy in the centuries of persecution: simple, but all the essentials are already there. The Frenchman’s orchestral version is like the fully developed medieval-Baroque liturgy: the solemn Tridentine Mass. The progressive rock version, with vernacular words added to it, is like the Novus Ordo: in some ways loosely based on what came before, but a deviation and a decadence. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.traditionsanity.com/subscribe