Moussorgsky arranged his own text for _Boris Godounov_, retaining Poushkin's words intact wherever that was practicable, and simplifying, remodelling, or adding to the original material when necessary. The result is a series of living-pictures from Russian history, somewhat disconnected if taken apart from the music, which is the coagulating element of the work. The welding of these widely contrasting scenes is effected partially by the use of recurrent leading motives, but chiefly by a remarkable homogeneity of musical style. Moussorgsky, as may be proved from his correspondence, was consciously concerned to find appropriate musical phrases with which to accompany certain ideas in the course of opera; but he does not use leading motives with the persistency of Wagner. No person or thing is labelled in _Boris Godounov_, and we need no thematic guide to thread our way through the psychological maze of the work. There is one motive that plays several parts in the music-drama. Where it occurs on page 49 of the pianoforte score of 1908 (just after Pimen's words to Gregory: "He would now be your age, and should be Tsar to-day"), it evokes the memory of the murdered Tsarevich Dmitri; but it also enters very subtly into the soul-states of the impostor who impersonates him, and those of the remorseful Boris. There are other characteristic phrases for Boris, suggesting his tenderness for his children and his ruthless ambition. The opera opens with a prologue in which the people are gathered in the courtyard of the many-towered monastery of Novo-Dievichy at Moscow, whither Boris had withdrawn after the assassination of the Tsarevich. The crowd moves to and fro in a listless fashion; it hardly knows why it is there, but hopes vaguely that the election of a new ruler may bring some amelioration of its sad lot. Meanwhile the astute Boris shows no unseemly haste to snatch at the fruit of his crime. The simplicity and economy of means with which Moussorgsky produces precisely the right musical atmosphere is very striking. The constable enters, and with threats and blows galvanises the weary and indifferent throng into supplications addressed to Boris. The secretary of the Duma appears, and announces that Boris refuses the crown; the crowd renews its entreaties. When the pilgrims enter, the people wake to real life, pressing around them, and showing that their enthusiasm is for spiritual rather than for temporal things. In the second scene, which shows the coronation procession across the Red Square in the Kremlin, the Song of Praise (_Slavsia_) is sung with infinitely greater heartiness; for now the Tsar comes into personal contact with his people. The scenes of the Prologue and the Coronation move steadily on, just as they would do in real life; there is scarcely a superfluous bar of musical accompaniment, and the ordinary operatic conventions being practically non-existent, we are completely convinced by the realism of the spectacle and the strangely