Promenade, all through the set. (Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition)

The programmatic structure which Mussorgsky creates through Pictures, while grand in construction, is fairly regularly understood. The sounds that he employs are surprising, but only outside the context of the music of Russian romantics (minus those westernized sillies, like Tchaikovsky). All in all, Pictures is a piece that could be portrayed as fairly un-remarkable based on a simple description of it's concept. Yes, each movement does match a real image, presumably, and the character of each image is, at least in this writer's opinion, aptly matched. But, we've seen all of this. The things that are being described are all typical Romantic concepts.

So, what's different? What makes Pictures one for the galleries, rather than storage, metaphorically speaking? I would argue that it is the promenade theme that not only makes the piece unified, but that drives it forward to a stunning conclusion in the Great Gate at Kiev. It is his recharacterization of this theme over and over that amazes me, and the way that the theme is so open to transformation. The fact that the meter is mixed (5/4 and 6/4, or originally 11/4) allows accent to be moved to different parts of the phrase, and calls to mind Russian folk music. The theme constructed on a nearly larger-than-life scale, but, in successful performances, conviences an audience to believe in it's magnitude.