Modest Petrovic Mussorgsky was a composer, one of the Russian composers known as the Five, he was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period, his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other nationalist themes. Mussorgsky had to pursue a military career, but his main interest was music, in fact he followed this passion, even if it gave him a very difficult life. he was suffering from nervous disorders and depression, also caused by the defect of drinking, his compositions expressing the anxiety of the human race. During three years, spent in the country along with his brother, Musorgsky devoted himself to compose some of his most important works, such as "Night on Bald Mountain" (which enjoyed broad popular recognition in the 1930s, when it was featured, along with Schubert's 'Ave Maria', in the Disney film Fantasia), and other poems for voice and piano. In 1874 he composed the music for some poems of Count Kutuzov, including "Songs and Dances of Death." The same period is the famous piano suite "Pictures at an Exhibition", an attempt to translate in music some pictures and watercolors of his friend and artist Victor Hartmann (1834-1873). "Pictures at an Exhibition" was published posthumously, and it's best known through an orchestral arrangement by Maurice Ravel. A modern version of this work was performed by the English progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Mussorgsky's masterpiece is considered the opera "Boris Godunov" (from a work by Pushkin), his only opera represented while he was still alive, while the subsequent "Kovancina" and "The Fair at Sorochyntsi" remained unfinished at his death, and supplemented by other Russian musicians (the best known is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov').