Abstract
This essay aims at finding autobiographical traces of Modest Musorgsky’s childhood in his composition Detskaia – The Nursery (1873). Musorgsky is the author of both the music and the lyrics. He structured the piece from a child’s point of view, which is characterised by incoherence and behavioural gaps. This total immersion in the child’s world is further enhanced by the structure of the music, which is free from the western tenets and rich in rhythm variations and dissonant harmonies. Letters, biographies and autobiographical sketches are precious sources for finding connections between the child’s world and Musorgsky’s vision of childhood, based on his own.
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