One might best consider The Seamstress Mussorgsky's answer to Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne worte entitled Spinning Song. Both are little scherzos, going in moto perpetuo in their depiction of the activity of the title. Mussorgsky wrote his Seamstress in January 1871, before setting to work on the second version of Boris Godunov. It is his most advanced and technically difficult piano piece until that time and requires a real virtuoso to play it, in contrast to his earlier piano pieces which were, with the exception of Intermezzo in modo classico, salon pieces of trifling difficulty.

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