mussorgsky continued his career as a civil servant, but often he was not paid. he was very impressed by dargomïzhsky’s new opera "the stone guest" and composed eleven scenes for an opera called "the marriage". this, too, remained unfinished. however, he learned a lot from working at these unfinished works, and developed his own style which was later used in his greatest work: "boris godunov". he learned a way of setting words to music that would keep the words flowing in a natural way which heightened their meaning. it was very different from the old-style operas where music was divided sharply into arias and recitatives with a few choruses.