Santa Clarita Symphony

The Five

Mily Balakirev

The Five, known in Russian as The mighty handful and often translated as The Mighty Fist; was a label applied in 1867 by the critic Vladimir Stasov to a loose collection of Russian composers brought together under the leadership of Mily Balakirev with the aim of producing a specifically Russian kind of art music rather than one that imitated older European music or relied on European-style conservatory training.

Alexander Borodin

In a sense, they were a branch of the Romantic Nationalism movement in Russia, with the Abramtsevo Colony and Russian Revival striving to achieve similar goals in the sphere of fine arts.

The Russian version of the name spawned the term "kuchkist", which may be applied to artistic aims or works in tune with the sensibilities of The Five.

Cesar Cui

The formation of the group began in 1856, with the first meeting of Balakirev and César Cui; Modest Mussorgsky joined them in 1857, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1861, and Alexander Borodin in 1862. Before them, Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky had gone some way towards producing a distinctly Russian kind of music, writing operas on Russian subjects, but The Five represented the first concentrated attempt to develop such a music, with Stasov as their artistic advisor and Dargomyzhsky as an elder statesman to the group, so to speak.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

As a group The Five began to fall apart during the 1870s, no doubt partially due to the fact that Balakirev withdrew from musical life early in the decade for a period of time. All of "The Five" are buried in Tikhvin Cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Petrovich Mussorgsky

Except perhaps for Cui, the members of this group influenced and/or taught many of the great Russian composers who were to follow, including Alexander Glazunov, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

RELATED ITEMS
Alexander Borodin Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Sergei Prokofiev Bela Barkok Petrovich Mussorgsky Mily Balakirev Cesar Cui Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

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