The Porte-Enseigne Polka is Mussorgsky's first work for piano and his first completed composition. He had shown great talents as a pianist while still a child, playing a small piece by Liszt when he was seven and performing a concerto by John Field at 11. But his technique had become wild under the instruction of his nurse, and it was only after study with Anton Herke of St. Petersburg that he found discipline in his music making. While Herke predicted that Mussorgsky could have a great career as a pianist, his father, despite his enthusiasm for the boy's piano playing, insisted he follow the family's traditional career path and become an officer in the Russian army.

When he joined the school of the cadets of the Guards, the young Mussorgsky—a short, sensitive boy from the provinces—was able to win a place for himself with his rougher contemporaries by playing the piano and improvising while they sang and drank; among those improvisations was the Porte-Enseigne Polka of 1852. With the help of his teacher Herke, this work was actually published by Bernard in an anthology entitled Polkas modernes—"to the author's regret," as Mussorgsky noted in 1871. The Porte-Enseigne Polka is a simple, unoriginal and wholly uncharacteristic work. But, while not the work of a young Mozart or Mendelssohn, it is still not bad for a 13-year-old.

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