Sunless (Russian: Без солнца, Bez Solntsa, literally Without Sun) is a song cycle by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, written in 1874 and arranged for voice and piano. The song cycle is set to poems by Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a relative of the composer.
Mussorgsky chose six unpublished poems for the cycle by Golenishchev-Kutuzov, whom he had recently met.[1] These poems comprise a loose narrative that is nostalgic, surreal, and pessimistic, dwelling upon lost love, romantic rejection, and doubts from the protagonist's past, culminating in a contemplation of death.[2] This narrative is believed to be in part autobiographical; musicologist Richard Taruskin characterized it as the voice of "a neurotically self-absorbed, broken-down aristocrat." Scholars have speculated that this pessimism may have arisen from the poor reception of Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov, the death of Mussorgsky's friends Viktor Gartmann and Nadezhda Opochinina in 1873-74, tensions in Mussorgsky's relationship with Golenishchev-Kutuzov, and/or the class tensions of the decade.
Sunless was described by scholar Simon Perry as "aesthetically and stylistically anomalous" among Mussorgsky's work, makes use of symmetrical or “synthetic” chromaticism.[3]
The song cycle, like Boris Godunov, met a scathing reception, and Mussorgsky did not mention it in his autobiography.[4]
The individual song titles are as follows:
