After O Darling Savishna, Mussorgsky's "breakthrough" song in which he discovered how to write convincingly in the "folk" idiom, he composed a series of comic works in that style. The third of these, The Seminarist, from September 27, 1867, with a text by Mussorgsky himself, tells the comic story of a fellow studying for the priesthood who cannot get his mind off the charms of his priest's daughter. The text skillfully melds the Seminarist's Latin declinations with his amorous reveries, and the music matches the text exactly. The flexibility of the melodic line and its phrasing create a structure that is wholly original and at once subtly nuanced and instantly obvious. The Seminarist was dedicated to Ludmilla Shestakova-Glinka, the sister of the composer Mikhail Glinka who was the spiritual godfather of the group of composers to which Mussorgsky belonged, the Mighty Handful.

© James Leonard, Rovi