Petrovish, 2010).
It is worth noting that Mussorgsky has been characterized as one of "the Five" nationalist Russian composers, a group that also included his close friend Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Cui, and Glinka (Asiado, 2007). As described by Dorak (2010), the Russian movement to incorporate nationalist themes into music drew Russian composers away from a reliance on the canons of French and Italian music. St. Petersburg, Russia was the center of the work undertaken by the Five and it was after the 1830s that this particular movement became characteristic of Russian music. Dorak (2010) pointed out that the plots of many of the works produced during this period were true to contemporary life, embodied with a distinctive and colorful national style in which realism predominated. Dorak (2010) states that Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov embodied the nationalist agenda.
Elements of the uniquely Russian harmonic language used in Boris Godunov and other works of the era were described by Dorak (2010). The use of whole tone elements, chromaticism, and higher discords tended to result in a frequent use of augmented triads as all triads using whole tones are augmented. A common harmonic cliché in Russian music described by Dorak (2010, p. 2) was "chord I - followed by augmented chord I and V I B, has for example, tonal/modal ambiguity. A new harmonic language was needed because of the employment of monadic modal tunes.... There was also a pronounced interest in new rhythmic patterns. Quintuple time, five bar phrases, and the
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